After being detected in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, the measures taken by social media platforms due to the coronavirus epidemic, which spread to the whole world and caused the death of 17,454 people so far, are also tightening. After Facebook, Instagram also reorganizes the control system in the axis of coronavirus. Instagram tries to eliminate scams and fraudulent news about coronavirus and prevent them from spreading under the new control rules. Instagram follows the steps taken by its parent company, Facebook. “We are making many changes to reduce the spread of disinformation,” the statement posted on Instagram’s blog page said. Reliable health institutions will be highlighted: Explaining that they will remove informal accounts from their account suggestions, Instagram noted that they are working on deleting some coronavirus-related content in the ‘Explore’ section unless shared by a trusted healthcare organization. Again, Instagram said they would push down the posts and stories that were judged wrong after being checked by third parties. Instagram and Facebook are working with third-party companies that control content on their platforms, and they frequently delete content that has been flagged as fake, but it can still be viewed in Instagram’s stream despite the content being deleted on the Search and Explore tabs. When it comes to posts on coronavirus, Instagram works with healthcare professionals to detect and delete content that could potentially harm people if they believe. In this case, these contents are deleted directly instead of the warning signs. In this way, Instagram stated that they aim to spread reliable information through the application throughout the epidemic. Facebook also added the ‘Coronavirus Information Center’ to the top of the news flow and opened the Workplace service for free for some employees. Facebook also works with other tech giants and the US government to help monitor the spread of the outbreak.
