In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic raging across the globe, Facebook has notably stepped up its efforts to fight the spread of medical misinformation. And earlier this week, the social media giant announced that it has already directed more than 1 billion people to check out accurate information.

“Ever since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global public health emergency, we’ve been working to connect people to accurate information and taking aggressive steps to stop misinformation and harmful content from spreading,” Facebook VP of Global Affairs and Communications Nick Clegg wrote in a blog post. “Through these efforts across Facebook and Instagram, we’ve directed more than 1 billion people to resources from health authorities including the WHO — more than 100 million of whom clicked through to learn more.”

Additionally, Facebook has started displaying pop-ups at the top of users’ news feeds, and it has created an online hub for coronavirus news. However, misinformation is still widely available to find on the platform, and hoaxes have been spreading through the Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp. As usual with Facebook, no matter how hard it tries to clamp down on its spam problem, it can’t possibly catch everything.

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