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SFGATE: On Twitter, almost 60 percent of false claims about coronavirus remain online - without a warning label

On Twitter, almost 60 percent of false claims about coronavirus remain online - without a warning label
Published on April 08, 2020 at 04:13AM by Craig Timberg, The Washington Post

More than half of the misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic that has been debunked by fact-checkers remains on Twitter without any warning label, a record that puts it far behind rival social media platforms, according to a study released Tuesday night by Oxford University researchers.

The study examined 225 pieces of content that independent fact-checkers had rated as false or misleading between January and March. The Oxford researchers found that 59 percent of it remained on Twitter, 27 percent remained on YouTube and 24 percent remained on Facebook.

"It's surprising that so many of the things that have been proven to be false are still living on social media," said co-author Philip N. Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, which conducted the study in concert with the university's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Oxford Martin School.

Researchers also found that the most common subject of coronavirus misinformation concerned false claims about the actions of government or other international authorities, such as the United Nations or World Health Organization.

The most powerful spreaders of misinformation were politicians, celebrities or other public figures, who were the source of about 20 percent of false claims but generated 69 percent of the total "engagement," a term that measures the reach of misinformation on social media. The report cited President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as politicians who have made documented false statements about the pandemic, and all three platforms studied in the Oxford report in March removed some misinformation from Bolsonaro that violated their policies against harmful content.

Independent fact-checkers have increased their focus on false claims about the coronavirus as the pandemic has grown in recent months,...

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