Press freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is suing Facebook in France, saying the social media platform spreads misinformation. The suit was filed Monday with the Paris public prosecutor. “Reporters Without Borders accuses Facebook of ‘deceptive commercial practices’ on the grounds that the social media company’s promises to provide a ‘safe’ and ‘error-free’ online environment are contradicted by the large-scale proliferation of hate speech and false information on its networks,” the group said in a press release. Specifically, the group says Facebook allows “hate speech” against the media, as well as misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. The group said Facebook allowed posts that were insulting and threatening against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as well as targeting the TV program “Quotidien” and a regional newspaper, L’Union. Facebook said in a statement that it “has zero tolerance for any harmful content on our platforms,” Bloomberg reported. “Over the last few years, we’ve tripled the size of our safety and security team to 35,000 and built artificial intelligence technology to proactively find and remove harmful content,” the statement continued, according to Bloomberg. “While nobody can eliminate misinformation and hate speech from the internet entirely, we continue using research, experts and technologies to tackle them in the most comprehensive and effective way possible.” Should RSF win its case, the decision could have global repercussions for Facebook, as its terms of service are similar worldwide. Any change in France could trigger changes elsewhere. Facebook and other Big Tech companies have been under intense pressure to stop what some call misinformation. In December, the EU proposed new regulations that could hit companies with fines of up to 6% of their global revenue for not complying with orders to remove content deemed violent hate speech, according to Bloomberg.
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Day: March 23, 2021
A new outside report found that Facebook has allowed groups — many tied to QAnon, boogaloo and militia movements — to glorify violence during the 2020 election and in the weeks leading up to the deadly riots on the U.S. Capitol in January.
Avaaz, a nonprofit advocacy group that says it seeks to protect democracies from misinformation, identified 267 pages and groups on Facebook that it says spread violence-glorifying material in the heat of the 2020 election to a combined following of 32 million users.
More than two-thirds of the groups and pages had names that aligned with several domestic extremist movements, the report found. The first, boogaloo, promotes a second U.S. civil war and the breakdown of modern society. The second is the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against the “deep state” and a sect of powerful Satan-worshipping pedophiles who dominate Hollywood, big business, the media and government. The rest are various anti-government militias. All have been largely banned from Facebook since 2020.
But despite what Avaaz called “clear violations” of Facebook’s policies, it found that 119 of these pages and groups were still active on the platform as of March 18 and had just under 27 million followers.
Facebook acknowledged that its policy enforcement “isn’t perfect,” but said the report distorts its work against violent extremism and misinformation.
The company said in a statement that it has done more than any other internet company to stanch the flow of harmful material, citing its bans of “nearly 900 militarized social movements” and the removal of tens of thousands of QAnon pages, groups, and accounts. It added that it is always improving its efforts against misinformation.
On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are slated to testify before Congress about extremism and misinformation on their platforms.
Facebook has tightened its rules against violence, hate and misinformation in the past year. In October, it banned QAnon groups across its platform. Before that, it would remove them only if they expressly supported violence. It has also banned extremist and militia movements and boogaloo groups with varying degrees of success.
For instance, while Facebook banned “Stop the Steal” groups from its platform, Avaaz — like The Associated Press — found that such groups and the #stopthesteal hashtag remained active on the platform after the purge.
Facebook’s failures, Avaaz said, “helped sweep America down the path from election to insurrection.”
According to the report, the social network provided a “fertile ground” for misinformation and toxicity that contributed to radicalizing millions of Americans, helping create the conditions in which the storming of the Capitol became a reality.
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Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day Wednesday, doctors are warning that progress in the global fight against the disease has been set back more than a decade by the coronavirus pandemic. Henry Ridgwell reports.
Video editor: Rod James
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Just hours after AstraZeneca said late-stage trials of its COVID-19 vaccine prove it has “100% efficacy against severe or critical disease and hospitalization,” a key U.S. government oversight group expressed concern about the drugmaker’s information. The Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), an advisory arm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, issued a statement early Tuesday that the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant “may have included outdated information” from the late-stage clinical trial, “which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”AstraZeneca said Monday that its analysis of the safety and efficacy of its vaccine, developed jointly with Britain’s University of Oxford, was based on more than 30,000 participants in U.S. trials. Researchers at Oxford also said the vaccine is 79% effective against preventing symptomatic coronavirus.FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson receives the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered by nurse and Clinical Pod Lead, Lily Harrington at St.Thomas’ Hospital in London, March 19, 2021.The DSMB urged AstraZeneca to work with it to review the data and “ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible.”The statement from the independent board of experts is the latest setback for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which has had a troubled rollout. Several European countries recently stopped its use because of reports that it was associated with blood clots in recipients. And South Africa stopped using the shot due to concerns about its efficacy against a local variant of the coronavirus. The country sold at least a million doses of its AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to the African Union. But the European Medicines Agency, the drug approval body for the European Union, said the vaccine is safe and does not raise the overall risk of blood clots. The World Health Organization has subsequently recommended the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against variants of the coronavirus, and that it considers its benefits to outweigh its risks.FILE – Dr. Ngong Cyprian, left, is the first Nigerian to receive the first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine at the National Hospital Abuja, Nigeria, March 5, 2021.The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been the leading choice among the developing world because of its low cost and simple storage requirements. South Korean President Moon Jae-in was inoculated with the vaccine on Tuesday.Much better news about a COVID-19 treatment came Tuesday from Britain. A study by the NHS (National Health Service) England says that the steroid Dexamethasone has saved the lives of an estimated one million people around the world, including 22,000 in Britain. Researchers found that the inexpensive and widely available drug reduced the risk of death by a third for coronavirus patients on ventilators, while deaths fell nearly a fifth for those on oxygen, according to the results of a clinical trial dubbed Recovery. Germany extend lockdownMeanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday the government is extending the country’s lockdown until April 18, citing the steady rise of new infections. The extended restrictions include a total lockdown between April 1-5 during the upcoming Easter holiday, with a request for all Germans to stay home during the period. German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a news conference after a meeting with state leaders to discuss options beyond the end of the pandemic lockdown, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Berlin, Germany, March 23, 2021.Merkel and all of the country’s 16 state governors had recently crafted a plan to gradually lift the coronavirus restrictions by March 28. But Germany has been plagued by a spike in new infections due to the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant, along with the slow pace of vaccinations, with only 9% of the population having received at least one shot of the vaccine. “We basically have a new pandemic,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin Tuesday. The B.1.1.7 variant was first detected in the United Kingdom and it is easily transmitted and more deadly, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned during a White House press conference on Friday.
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Campaigners against tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs, say the coronavirus pandemic has rolled back years of progress in treating TB. But Nigeria — one of the countries hardest hit by the disease — has managed to maintain its progress, as Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
Camera: Emekas Gibson
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Australian authorities said Tuesday that more evacuation orders may be issued as relentless rains pummeled the country’s east coast, with several regions in Sydney’s west facing the worst floods in half a century. The wild weather system pounding New South Wales (NSW) over the last three days was expected to gather more strength in the next 24 hours thanks to the combination of a tropical low over northern Western Australia and a coastal trough off the east. “Overnight, unfortunately, some weather conditions have worsened, and those weather conditions are likely to worsen during the day so many communities will experience increasing heavy rainfall,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. Berejiklian said 15,000 more residents may need to be evacuated soon after authorities moved 18,000 to safe zones Monday.Severe flooding in Sydney, March 22, 2021.With 38 disaster areas declared in the state, authorities Tuesday described the next 24 hours as critical, as fast-moving flood waters overflowed riverbanks and inundated houses, farms and bridges across large swathes of the state. Though the weather system is likely to start easing starting late Wednesday, officials warned that residents may not be able to return to their homes immediately as incessant rains dump more water in river catchment areas. “Some of you may be wondering why you can’t go back home because it’s a sunny day. It’s because conditions are unsafe for that to occur,” Berejiklian said. Neighboring Queensland was also bracing for heavy showers Tuesday in the southern parts of the state, with the weather system expected to shift south to parts of Victoria and the island state of Tasmania over the next few days. About 10 million people in all states and territories except Western Australia will be affected by the extreme weather, the weather bureau said, with NSW and Queensland expected to bear the brunt of the system.
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