Facebook Inc. announced today that it will start notifying people if they have engaged with misinformation regarding COVID-19.

Although information and research pertaining to the novel coronavirus changes daily and not all scientists agree on various aspects of the disease, that’s not what Facebook seems to be interested in.

What the company is more concerned about is the outlandish misinformation that has been appearing on the platform, which includes magical cures and even falsehoods relating to races reputedly immune to the COVID-19.

Facebook has been accused of allowing COVID-19 misinformation to surface and the platform and its team of fact-checkers allegedly haven’t been quick enough to take the posts down. This has not been an easy time for the company. Last month, Facebook was accused of taking too many COVID-19 posts down.

To combat what is now being called an “infodemic,” Facebook said in a blog post today that it’s still directing more than 2 billion people to credible sources of information. The company said its now working with 60 fact-checking organizations in 50 different languages.

The good news is that Facebook has displayed warnings on about 40 million COVID-19 posts that fact-checkers flagged as misinformation. Some 95 percent of the time the user would not read the story if it had been flagged, according to Facebook’s research. The company has now gone a step further, and is going after misinformation consumers.

“We’re going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president for integrity. “These messages will connect people to COVID-19 myths debunked by the WHO including ones we’ve removed from our platform for leading to imminent physical harm.”

In the coming weeks, people who have interacted with such misinformation will start receiving these messages, according to Rosen. He also said the company has recently updated its COVID-19 Information Center with a section called “Get the Facts.” That includes fact-checked articles and the section will be updated weekly, although right now this section is available only in the U.S.

Image: World Health Organization