[News] Facebook news ban sees anti-vaccine misinformation pages unaffected and posting in 'information vacuum'

[_Happy boy]

On a second page of more than 20,000 members, also with a history of posting anti-vaccine misinformation, a post celebrates that the government "won't be able to distribute their COVID-19 fear-mongering and propaganda to the Australian public".

A Queensland University of Technology (QUT) analysis has found "publishers of low or dubious credibility have remained unaffected by the ban".

Meanwhile, the number of posts sharing links to major Australian news sites on Australia-based Facebook pages has fallen by half since Wednesday, the analysis found.

This has led to concerns Australian Facebook will see a spike in vaccine scare stories and anti-vaccine sentiment only days before the country rolls out its first COVID-19 vaccine.

Public health experts have slammed Facebook's "hypocrisy" in trumpeting its work on misinformation while simultaneously creating the ideal conditions in which this misinformation may spread unchallenged.

The Facebook pages of federal politicians Craig Kelly and George Christensen, which have been found to have spread health misinformation, have also been unaffected by the ban.

"Some highly partisan Facebook pages that are known spreaders of misinformation" remain on the platform, said Daniel Angus, an associate professor at QUT's Digital Media Research Centre.

"Some of these sites self-declare themselves as 'news organisations', yet Facebook has allowed them to remain

How does Facebook decide what is 'news'?
Asked how it decided what was "news", Facebook said it used a very broad definition.

It said this was in response to the "all-encompassing" definition used in the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code Bill.

The bill covers any kind of news content that "reports, investigates or explains":

"Issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or
"Current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level"
Interestingly, Facebook said this definition includes both "news entities and news sources", which may be why non-news pages that have shared links to news sites have been caught up in the ban.

For example, this may be why the Bureau of Meteorology, which often shares ABC weather stories, has been banned.

But why have pages known for spreading disinformation been able to duck the ban?

One theory is that the chaos has been intentional.

"The false positive rate for sweeping up non-news sources in the ban is not unintended," said Tim Graham, also at QUT's Digital Media Research Centre.

"It is about sending a message about how embedded Facebook is to social and economic infrastructure."

His colleague Edward Hurcombe said Facebook may be demonstrating the apparent vagueness of what counts as "core news" under the bargaining code.

"This 'randomness' is in a crucial way, deliberate," he said.

ulie Leask, a professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Sydney, and one of Australia's leading experts on vaccine hesitancy, said Facebook was displaying "breathtaking hypocrisy".

"They make a song and dance about censoring anti-vaccine content for public health at the same time as they're restricting users' access to local news," she said.

"This is particularly egregious when they do it at the very beginning of the vaccine rollout when we need local, relevant news more than ever."

Earlier this month, Facebook announced it was running "the largest worldwide campaign to promote authoritative information about COVID-19 vaccines." This includes giving millions of dollars in ad credits to health ministries and cracking down on false claims about vaccines on Facebook and Instagram.

The spread of hoaxes and debunked scare stories about COVID vaccines could lead to more people choosing to not take the vaccine, which would make the vaccination program less effective.

Misinformation spreads in a vacuum of factual information, said Professor Leask, who has advised the World Health Organization on vaccine communication.

In public health circles, preventing this vacuum from growing too large is known as 'minding the gap'.

"All the advice we give to governments is you need to 'mind the gap'," she said.

"'If there's misinformation out there, it's very important that if it starts to gain traction, it's debunked in a very timely way.

"If news organisations and the voices of science and advocacy for vaccination can't access audiences to debunk misinformation, then other voices will fill that gap."

Studies show that Australians turn to news during natural disasters and other crises.

A recent University of Canberra report found Australians accessed significantly more news during the pandemic compared to the year beforehand.

It found 39 per cent of Australians use Facebook for general news, and 49 per cent are using it for news about COVID-19.

"There's so many people who don't access mainstream media except through social media like Facebook," Professor Leask said.

"We won't be able to reach people to let them know the vaccine is due.

"If the only way to reach people is to pay for ads, then we're in a kind of bizarre information dystopia."