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• Facebook is taking a harder line on misinformation related to coronavirus than it has on other health topics in the past.
• This decision may increase the pressure on the company to act more decisively against other forms of harmful falsehoods that spread on its social networks.
• Facebook is banning events that promote flouting lockdown protests, and is removing the conspiracy theory video "Plandemic."
• But false claims that vaccines are dangerous still proliferate on Facebook — even though they contribute to the deaths of children.

Amid the pandemic, Facebook is taking a harder line on misinformation than it has in the past. That decision may come back to haunt it.

As coronavirus has wreaked havoc across the globe, forcing lockdowns and disrupting economies, false information and hoaxes have spread like wildfire on social media. Miracle cures, intentional disinformation about government policies, and wild claims that Bill Gates orchestrated the entire health crisis abound.

In the past, Facebook has been heavily criticised for failing to take action to stop its platform being used to facilitate the spread of misinformation. To be sure, coronavirus falsehoods are still easily found on Facebook — but the company has taken more decisive action than in previous years:

• For starters, Facebook is now displaying warning messages to people who have shared false information about COVID-19. They're imperfect — Stat reported that they may be too vague in their wording to have a major impact — but it's a step further than Facebook has taken on misinformation in the past.
• The company is also taking down event pages for events that reject mainstream science on coronavirus by calling on people to flout lockdown rules.
• And it is banning "Plandemic," a conspiratorial video about coronavirus that has been going viral on social media and contains numerous falsehoods.

But Facebook's actions to combat COVID-19 misinformation may backfire — in the sense that it has the potential to dramatically increase pressure on the company to take stronger action against other forms of misinformation.

The company has long struggled with how to handle fake news and hoaxes; historically, its approach is not to delete them, but to try to artificially stifle their reach via algorithmic tweaks. Despite this, pseudoscience, anti-government conspiracy theories, and other falsehoods still abound on the social network.

Facebook has now demonstrated that it is willing to take more decisive action on misinformation, when the stakes are high enough. Its critics may subsequently ask why it is so reticent to combat the issue when it causes harm in other areas — particularly around other medical misinformation.

One expected defence for Facebook? That it is focused on taking down content that causes "imminent harm," and while COVID-19 misinformation falls into that category, lots of other sorts of falsehoods don't.

However, using "imminence" as the barometer of acceptability is dubious: Vaccine denialism directly results in the deaths of babies and children. That this harm isn't "imminent" doesn't make it any less dangerous — but, for now, such material is freely posted on Facebook.

Far-right conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, and more recent, Qanon, have also spread on Facebook — stoking baseless fears of shadowy cabals secretly controlling the government. These theories don't intrinsically incite harm, but have been linked to multiple acts of violence, from a Pizzagate believer firing his weapon in a pizza parlour to the Qanon-linked killing of a Gambino crime boss. (Earlier this week, Facebook did take down some popular QAnon pages — but for breaking its rules on fake profiles, rather than disinformation.)

And Facebook is still full of groups rallying against 5G technology, making evidence-free claims about its health effects (and now, sometimes linking it to coronavirus in a messy web). These posts exist on a continuum, with believers at the extreme end attempting to burn down radio towers and assault technicians; Facebook does take down such incitements to violence, but the more general fearmongering that can act as a gateway to more extreme action remains.

This week, Facebook announced the first 20 members of its Oversight Board — a "Supreme Court"-style entity that will review reports from users make rulings as to what objectionable content is and isn't allowed on Facebook and Instagram, with — in theory — the power to overrule the company. It remains to be seen whether its decisions may affect the company's approach for misinformation, and it still needs to appoint the rest of its members and get up and running.

For now, limits remain in place as to what Facebook will countenance in its fight against coronavirus-specific misinformation.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would immediately take down posts advertising dangerous false cures to COVID-19, like drinking bleach. It is "obviously going to create imminent harm," he said in March. "That is just in a completely different class of content than the back-and-forth accusations a candidate might make in an election."

But in April, President Donald Trump suggested that people might try injecting a "disinfectant" as a cure, which both has the potential to be extremely harmful, and will not cure coronavirus.

Facebook is not taking down video of his comments.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

SEE ALSO: Facebook announced the first 20 members of its oversight board that will decide what controversial content is allowed on Facebook and Instagram

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4 March 2020

4 March 2020

Corporate Members Event Webinar

Che Sidanius, Global Head of Regulation & Industry Affairs, Refinitiv

Patricia Sullivan, Global Co-Head, Financial Crime Compliance, Standard Chartered

Dame Sara Thornton, Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, UK

Chair: Tom Keatinge, Director, Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies, RUSI

28 April 2020

Expert

Expert

Expert

Health startups are being corralled by the NHS and the government to point their talents at the COVID-19 pandemic, while others are volunteering services to help stymie the spread of the infectious new disease

After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the Government has announced a series of prevention and control measures to reduce the risk of spread of the disease in the community. Compulsory quarantine, on the basis of a public health emergency (under Cap. 599 Prevention & Control of Disease Ordinance), is one of the measures in place. From February 8 onwards, all people entering Hong Kong from the Mainland, including Hong Kong residents, Mainland residents as well as other visitors, are required to be subject to mandatory quarantine for 14 days upon their arrival. Even if they are entering from other places, if they have visited the Mainland over the past 14 days, mandatory quarantine is still applicable upon their arrival. Anyone who violates the regulation may face a maximum penalty of imprisonment for six months and a fine of $25,000 upon conviction. We hope that the new measures could further reduce the flow of people between Hong Kong and the Mainland, reducing the risks for a spread of the disease in Hong Kong.

The Department of Health would gather evidence and conduct investigations into any contravention of quarantine orders before referring the cases to the Department of Justice for making prosecutorial decisions. Our prosecutors would make such decisions based on available evidence, applicable laws and the Prosecution Code. A prosecution would be commenced if there is sufficient admissible evidence for a reasonable prospect of conviction.

Minimising social contact in the community is another key measure to curb the spread of the virus. Hence, we only arranged for a certain number of colleagues, including government counsel, paralegals and supporting staff, to return to the office to handle urgent matters and provide basic public services. The reception counters of the Prosecutions Division and the Civil Division have remained open over the past few weeks to allow members of the public and the legal profession to serve court documents. The shroff office is also partly open for payment service. Details of the service hours are available from our press release.

There are colleagues from different divisions returning to the office to handle emergency works including attending urgent court hearings, processing court documents and attending urgent meetings. We have arranged for sufficient manpower to provide cleansing services at the office to safeguard the health of colleagues. For others, who are given laptops and electronic communication devices, are advised to work at home. I am heartened to learn that the Department of Justice is largely functioning well.

The Judiciary announced that court hearings would be generally adjourned in view of public health considerations but the courts would continue to handle urgent and essential hearings. Colleagues from the Department of Justice have been deployed to attend such hearings to deal with cases including bail applications and sentencing.

I am grateful to all my colleagues for remaining steadfast at their posts at this difficult time. I also urge those who are required to stay at home or other dwelling places for a 14-day quarantine to abide by the law and strictly comply with the quarantine orders. Violation of orders causes a spread of the disease and leads to criminal prosecution. Last but not the least, I appeal to all members of the public to join hands with the Government to do their best to prevent and curb the spread of COVID-19 by maintaining good personal hygiene, thereby ending the epidemic as soon as possible.

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng wrote this article and posted it on her blog on February 17.

Last month, I paid a visit to Yuen Long where I met a few families at Long Shin Estate. Apart from distributing face masks and anti-epidemic supplies to them, I was also given a better understanding of the impact brought by the epidemic on their daily lives. To show our concerted support in the fight against the disease, the Department of Justice (DoJ) Staff Club organised a volunteer activity on Sunday, which I joined with my fellow colleagues in offering our help to those in need.

To echo the Government's move to stay united, the DoJ Staff Club put forth a cash contribution campaign to buy anti-epidemic supplies for donation. The staff club volunteers acquired face masks and alcohol-based handrub in different ways - some were purchased through online shopping and some were bought at medicine stores. Last Sunday, I joined the volunteers in packing the anti-epidemic supplies, supermarket cash coupons and leaflets with health information. Our volunteers took the care packs in person to a non-governmental organisation a few days ago for passing to the elderly and low-income groups.

The staff club has been participating in volunteer services now and then. Given the overwhelming response this time, I am glad to know that more volunteer activities would be organised in the future. I would definitely be joining as many as I could. Through offering our efforts to help those in need, we hope to show our care for the less privileged in society and contribute to building a caring and inclusive community.

The public services of the DoJ, like all other government departments, have gradually resumed back to normal. I inspected the Justice Place on Monday to learn more about the infection control measures in place, such as the body temperature checking arrangement, provision of hand sanitisers and sanitising mats at building entrances.

We must remain vigilant as the epidemic is still severe, and more importantly, we also need to stand in solidarity in the fight against the disease.

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng wrote this article and posted it on her blog on March 5.

During the third month of our fight against COVID-19, Hong Kong has experienced daunting challenges posed by the epidemic with no room to let down our guard.  Though we are a bit relieved to see a significant drop in the number of confirmed cases recently, the Government needs to remain alert given the volatility of the epidemic.

Developments of the epidemic

In the past month, the epidemic continued to spread rapidly in many countries around the world. The number of confirmed cases increased from 400,000 a month ago to 2.6 million today, an increase of some 600%, with over 180,000 deaths.  Many governments had little choice but to take extreme measures such as a city lockdown. During the same period, the overseas epidemic situation resulted in a large number of Hong Kong residents abroad, including students studying in the United States and Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom, to return to Hong Kong. Due to the large number of imported cases, Hong Kong’s epidemic situation, which had remained stable for a period up to mid-March, started to become severe and reached its peak at the end of March. On March 27, 28 and 29, Hong Kong recorded 65, 64 and 59 confirmed cases respectively on a single day. We were then extremely worried because if 60 new cases have to be admitted to hospital and placed in isolation each day (according to Hospital Authority statistics every confirmed case stays in hospital for 15 to 20 days on average) and if this number of new confirmed cases continued for one month then the Hospital Authority’s 1,200 or so isolation beds would be fully occupied and our hospital system would face unimaginable pressure.

Although deeply anxious, we did not lose our composure but continued to respond promptly to the developments of the epidemic taking account of expert advice. We bit the bullet and resolutely took stringent measures in response to the situation. The number of confirmed cases has dropped from the peak at end-March to single digits since April 12, with the great majority of cases being imported or their close contacts (See Graphic 1). This shows we have prevented local transmission and that Hong Kong, once again, has overcome the challenge.

Anti-epidemic efforts

Since the Government implemented stringent border control measures before end-March, including denying the entry to Hong Kong by plane of all non-Hong Kong residents arriving from overseas countries or regions from March 25, the anti-epidemic measures introduced over the past month focused on enhancing virus testing for inbound travellers and restricting social interactions to prevent the spread of the disease. However, we have not prohibited people from going out as many overseas countries have done. Most restaurants and shops have remained open.  People by and large can maintain their daily life.

Major measures implemented by the Government to respond to the developments of the epidemic in the past month are set out in the following table:  

Date

Event

March 25-26

Four chartered flights were sent over two days to bring back to Hong Kong the second batch of 558 Hong Kong residents stranded in Hubei Province.

March 25-26

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) extended the Enhanced Laboratory Surveillance Programme and set up a temporary specimen collection centre at AsiaWorld-Expo to provide virus testing for asymptomatic inbound travellers arriving from the UK and other countries in Europe as well as the US.

March 27

The Government announced that catering premises must comply with six disease control requirements and six types of premises (ie amusement game centres, bathhouses, fitness centres, places of amusement, places of public entertainment and premises for hire for holding social gatherings) must close from 6pm on March 28; and gatherings of more than four people in a public place would be prohibited from midnight on March 29.  At the same time, the Chief Executive announced the preparation of the second round of the Anti-epidemic Fund to provide further assistance to individuals and businesses.

April 1-2

The Government announced that karaoke establishments, mahjong-tin kau establishments and nightclubs must be closed and beauty parlours, clubhouses and massage establishments must step up epidemic control measures from 6pm on April 1; and bars must close from 6pm on April 3.

April 5

Sixty-five Hong Kong residents who took the chartered flights arranged by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government arrived in Hong Kong from Peru. Upon arrival, they were taken to the temporary specimen collection centre at AsiaWorld-Expo to undergo virus testing and were admitted to hospital or put under home quarantine subject to the test results.

April 8

The Government announced the closure of beauty parlours and massage establishments from midnight on April 10, and the extension of measures regulating catering businesses and scheduled premises as well as prohibiting group gatherings until April 23.

April 8

The Chief Executive announced the second round of the Anti-epidemic Fund and other related measures involving over $130 billion, including an $80 billion Employment Support Scheme. The Legislative Council Finance Committee approved the funding on April 18.

April 8

The Department of Health (DH) mandated all asymptomatic inbound travellers arriving at the Hong Kong International Airport to proceed to the temporary specimen collection centre to collect deep throat saliva samples according to instructions before undergoing compulsory quarantine at their place of accommodation. Besides, specimen collection containers will be provided to inbound travellers arriving via land boundary control points who have been to Hubei Province in the past 14 days.

April 9

The DH required all asymptomatic inbound travellers arriving on flights from the UK to stay and wait for the test results at the temporary specimen collection centre, and they can continue their quarantine at their place of accommodation only if the test result is negative. The arrangement was extended to asymptomatic inbound travellers arriving on flights from the US and other areas in Europe from April 13.

April 10

Twenty-seven Hong Kong residents who left Morocco on a chartered flight arranged by the Chinese Embassy in the Kingdom of Morocco arrived in Guangzhou. Apart from one Hong Kong resident who chose to stay in Guangzhou, all others returned to Hong Kong by prearranged coaches and were taken to AsiaWorld-Expo to undergo virus testing.

April 11

To ensure adequate quarantine facilities to cope with the development of the epidemic, the CHP will, where necessary, arrange for people under compulsory quarantine to stay at quarantine centres for the first 10 days and then continue quarantine at home for the remaining four days after virus testing.

April 19

The DH required all asymptomatic inbound travellers arriving on flights landing in the morning to stay and wait for the test results at the temporary specimen collection centre. They can continue quarantine at their place of accommodation only if the test result is negative.

April 19

With a declining number of inbound travellers, the Hospital Authority suspended the operation of the test centre at AsiaWorld-Expo from noon. Inbound travellers with symptoms will be admitted to public hospitals to undergo testing.

April 20

The DH started a trial to provide an extra specimen collection container to inbound travellers arriving at the Hong Kong International Airport for the submission of samples for another round of virus testing (on the 12th day) before the completion of home quarantine. The quarantine can be completed only if the test result is negative.

April 21

The Government announced the extension of all statutory measures to enhance social distancing for 14 days until May 7.

April 22

The DH required all asymptomatic inbound travellers arriving on flights landing in the afternoon or at night to stay and wait for virus test results at the holding centre in the Regal Oriental Hotel. They can continue quarantine at their place of accommodation only if the test result is negative. Upon implementation of the measure, all inbound travellers arriving at Hong Kong International Airport will be required to undergo testing and can return to the community only if the test result is negative.

The decision to extend various enhanced social distancing measures to early May is no doubt a further blow to the affected business sectors. The Government fully understands the disappointment and frustration of these sectors, but we dare not let down our guard as we look at the second or third wave of outbreaks around the world. In addressing the public health crisis, the Government also needs to consider the impact of the measures on the economy, livelihood and the daily lives of people.  I recall that Prof Gabriel Leung, one of the experts for the Government’s anti-epidemic work, once described the difficulty of the Government in making its decisions as a three-way tug of war (See Graphic 2).

We will continue to listen to the views of the experts and various sectors and constantly adjust the suppress and lift strategy according to the actual situation of the epidemic. The target is to achieve the optimal level of controls at all times.

Supporting individuals and businesses affected by the disease

The epidemic has lasted for more than three months and presents unprecedented challenges to our economy. Many businesses are facing pressure to close down or resort to massive staff layoffs, and many families and members of the public are facing severe hardship. According to the latest labour force statistics released by the Census & Statistics Department, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for January to March 2020 increased worryingly to 4.2%, the highest level in over nine years.

The Government will continue to make an all-out effort to keep our workers employed, relieve the financial burden of businesses and members of the public, and pave the way for post-epidemic economic recovery. The two rounds of the Anti-epidemic Fund and related relief measures, together with the relief package in the 2020-21 Budget announced by the Financial Secretary earlier on (yet to be approved by the LegCo), amount to $287.5 billion, representing 10% of gross domestic product. These measures are being implemented progressively to help businesses and members of the public tide over the difficult times.

Fighting the virus together

The hard-earned results of our anti-epidemic work over the past month are due to the togetherness of the community at large, the unswerving commitment of our healthcare professionals, the collaborative efforts of various government departments and the understanding of all sectors in society. I am confident that Hong Kong will come through the epidemic and the economic downturn. As long as we can hold on for some more time, we will soon see a bright tomorrow.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam issued this article entitled Three Months into Our Fight Seeing the Arrival of Dawn on April 25.