Facebook has invested heavily in fighting fraudulent ads and fake content related to the ongoing global coronavirus outbreak. Now the company announced this week that it will begin going a step further, notifying users directly who have interacted with scam COVID-19 content on the platform.

The notice will be sent to users who have clicked on, commented on or reacted to posts that have been removed by moderators for featuring “harmful or false” claims about the virus. It will appear at the top of users’ news feeds, and will redirect them to a myth-busting website from the World Health Organization.

“We want to connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook,” Facebook Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen wrote in a blog post. <

This is a welcome move from Facebook, which has acted admirably in recent months to stop this harmful content from spreading. However, these strong actions beg the question: why hasn’t Facebook taken similar steps with all of the other misinformation that propagates on its platform?

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