Facebook issue COVID-19 directive to group admins

In fresh attempt to help users get reliable information on new coronavirus, Facebook will now show members of COVID-19 related groups an educational pop-up directing them to credible information from health organisations.

It said that group admins need to share live broadcasts about COVID-19 from health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as official state and country health departments.

"We partnered with the CDC to develop a curriculum in our learning units tool that group admins can share with members to help them learn how to stay safe during the COVID-19 outbreak and prevent the spread of the disease," Facebook said in a statement late Tuesday.

The educational pop-us are similar to the messages Facebook shows in News Feed and in Search when billions of users look for COVID-19 related content.

"As people are turning to Groups to connect with communities they care about and get support during this time, we want to make it easy to find and share reliable information in groups," Facebook added.

In addition, Facebook has more than doubled the number of state and local governments and health agencies onboarded to local alerts.

"We now have more than 2,000 partners using the tool to communicate timely information to their communities," said the social networking giant.

Facebook is also asking users in the US to participate in a voluntary survey from Carnegie Mellon University to help health researchers generate new insights on how to respond to the crisis, including "heat maps" of self-reported symptoms.

Some people will see a link at the top of News Feed to an optional, off-Facebook survey to help health researchers better monitor and forecast the spread of COVID-19.-IANS