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.@Facebook: If you are truly cracking down on "harmful misinformation" about COVID-19 miracle cures, why isn't there a clear option for reporting it? Which options in your reporting menus should people select to report these kinds of posts?
Let's say a post is promoting a potentially lethal "cure" for COVID-19. It's not nudity, violence or harassment; not really someone threatening self-harm; it's not spam, an unauthorized sale, hate speech or terrorism; & it's not incorrect voting info. It must be "Something Else"
When we get to "Something Else," we're given 16 additional options for reporting -- but again, none of them have anything to do with reporting dangerous medical misinformation:
At this point, a thin sliver of users who are really dedicated to reporting medical misinformation would persist, and would have to just settle for something adjacent like "self-harm" or "spam" or "promoting drug use." And maybe their report would be taken seriously.
But many users at this point would just give up. They would assume that Facebook doesn't want them to report this since they haven't created a way to do it, and just browse on to something else.
If platforms want us to believe they take community standards and misinformation seriously, then they need to demonstrate that commitment in their content reporting architectures.
These options not only determine which posts do & do not get reported, they influence our habits & shape our perceptions. They partially determine what counts as problematic content and, regardless of intentions, send a strong message about the parameters of acceptable discourse.
UPDATE: The screenshot I included in the initial tweet in this thread was for comments to posts. The primary menu for posts includes "False News" as an option -- but again, I find that insufficient. A testimonial for drinking bleach isn't "false news."
But for clarity, this is the primary menu for posts as opposed to comments:
For contrast, here is how @Pinterest handles it in their reporting menu which, I think, is *much* better:
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