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WASHINGTON (AP) – In March, as allegations about the dangers and ineffectiveness of coronavirus vaccines circulated on social media, undermining attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they had found a way to help.

Researchers at the company realized that by ingeniously changing the way vaccine-related posts are sorted in people’s news feeds, they could reduce the misleading information individuals see about COVID-19 vaccines and present posts to users from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization.

“Given these results, I assume we hope to launch as soon as possible” Facebook the employee wrote back in March, responding to the internal memo about the study.

Instead of, Facebook shelved some of the suggestions from the research. Other changes were not made until April.

when else Facebook In March, the researcher suggested disabling comments on vaccine posts until the platform could do a better job of combating the anti-vaccine messages lurking within them, a recommendation that was ignored at the time.

critics say Facebook He acted slowly because he was worried it would affect the company’s profits.

“Why don’t you remove the comments? Because the important thing is engagement,” he said. Imran Ahmedis the CEO of the Center for Combating Digital Hate, an internet watchdog group. “Attention and attention, eyeball and eyeball equal advertising revenue.”

In an emailed statement, Facebook It said it has made “significant progress” this year by reducing the extent of vaccine misinformation in users’ feeds.

Facebook‘s internal discussions emerged in statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission and were submitted to Congress in a redacted form by the former. Facebook legal counsel to Frances Haugen, who turned from employee to whistleblower. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.

Treasure of documents, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook carefully researched how its platforms spread misinformation about life-saving vaccines. They also reveal that the solutions that ordinary employees regularly offer to counter the site’s anti-vaccine misinformation do nothing. The Wall Street Journal reported on some of them. Facebook‘s efforts to deal with anti-vaccine comments last month.

Inaction raises the following questions: Facebook It prioritized disagreement and division over the health of its users.

“These people sell fear and anger,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early investor. Facebook who is now a vocal critic. “This is not a hum. It is a business model.”

Typical, Facebook Sorts posts by engagement – total number of likes, dislikes, comments and reposts. This sorting scheme can work well for harmless topics like recipes, dog photos, or the latest viral songs. But Facebook‘s own documents show that when it comes to divisive, controversial issues like vaccines, participation ranking only highlights polarization, disagreement and doubt.

Investigating ways to reduce vaccine misinformation, Facebook Researchers changed how posts are sorted for over 6,000 users in the US, Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. Instead of seeing posts about vaccines selected based on their interactions, these users saw posts selected for their credibility.

The results were striking: a nearly 12% reduction in content leading to claims refuted by fact-checkers, and an 8% increase in content from authoritative public health organizations such as the WHO or the US Centers for Disease Control.

According to the internal changes, company employees reacted enthusiastically.

“Is there any reason why we shouldn’t do this?” a Facebook employee replied.

Facebook He said the study applies many of its findings—but not for another month for a delay that comes at an important stage in global vaccine delivery.

Company spokesperson Dani Lever said in a statement that the internal documents “do not represent significant progress we have made since then in promoting reliable information about COVID-19 and expanding our policies to eliminate more harmful COVID and vaccine misinformation.”

The company also said it takes time to consider and implement the changes.

Yet the urgent need for action could not be clearer: At the time, states in the US were distributing vaccines to the most vulnerable, the elderly and the sick. And public health officials were concerned. Only 10% of the population had received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. According to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, a third of Americans were considering skipping the shot altogether.

Nevertheless, Facebook Employees admitted in their comments section that they “had no idea” how bad the anti-vaccine sentiment was. Facebook shipments. But company research in February found that 60% of comments on vaccine posts were either anti-vaccine or reluctant to vaccinate.

Worse, company employees admitted that they had no hand in capturing these comments or had a policy to remove them.

“Our ability to detect[vaccine hesitancy]in the comments is poor in English and basically nowhere else,” said another internal memo, published March 2.

Los Angeles-based writer and fitness trainer Derek Beres sees anti-vaccine content flourish in the comments every time he promotes immunization on his Instagram account. Facebook. Last year, Beres started hosting a podcast after noticing conspiracy theories about COVID-19, and vaccines were swirling in the social media feeds of health and wellness influencers.

Earlier this year, when Beres shared a photo of himself receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, some on social media told him he would likely die within six months.

“The comments section is a dumpster fire for a lot of people,” Beres said.

Some Facebook Employees recommended disabling all comments on vaccine posts as the company works on a solution.

“We are very interested in your proposal to temporarily remove ALL inline comments for vaccine posts, until we sufficiently detect vaccine hesitancy in comments and refine our removal” Facebook employee wrote on March 2.

The suggestion didn’t go anywhere until mid-April, when Lever said the company had stopped showing previews of popular comments about vaccine shipments.

Instead of, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on March 15 that the company will begin labeling shipments describing vaccines as safe.

allowed movement Facebook to continue to generate high engagement and ultimately profit from anti-vaccine comments, he said. Ahmet From the Digital Anti-Hate Center.

“Facebook He made decisions that got people misinformed and killed them.” Ahmet said. “There should be a murder investigation at this point.”