Paris (AFP)
The government took stock on Friday in Bercy with the main search engines and social networks on the fight against false news on the coronavirus, a concern if the epidemic increases, he said.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Qwant, TikTok were present at this meeting, which also included government side Sibeth Ndiaye (government spokesperson), Cédric O (digital) and Adrien Taquet (solidarity and health).
The government, via the government information service (GIS), is in constant contact with social networks and search engines on the evolution of information circulating on the internet on the coronavirus.
Social networks and search engines have acted to highlight government information sites, in response to requests from Internet users for the coronavirus, according to the government.
They have also put in place measures to prevent the dissemination of advertisements on so-called miracle cures.
This monitoring and response device is ready to ramp up if the crisis, and the false news, accelerate, explained to AFP Cédric O.
"We don't need hospital emergencies to be crowded with people who have ingested bleach" to protect themselves from the coronavirus, following a social media tale, he said.
"The detection and the response to" false news "must be as smooth as possible," he said.
Social media has spread a lot of fake news about the coronavirus, without causing a disaster yet.
Since the start of the crisis, AFP's fact-checking site (https://factcheck.afp.com/) has issued 25 tickets in French for verifications of information on the coronavirus.
The international network of fact-checkers, including the specialized AFP team, has published the address of a site which groups all fact-checking work on its members' coronavirus on the same Twitter list: https://poy.nu/2019CoronaVirusFacts.
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