Gizmodo: “If Facebook had moved sooner to restrict hoax, toxic, misleading, or other content attempting to interfere with the 2020 elections, it could have limited its reach by around 10 billion views, according to a report by the advocacy group Avaaz. Researchers for Avaaz identified the 100 highest-performing pages on Facebook that had shared content classified as misinformation by the company’s own third-party fact-checkers, including at least twice within 90 days, per Time. Those pages received significantly more engagement than others throughout the summer of 2020, amid both the run-up to the election, the novel coronavirus pandemic, and nationwide protests against police racism and brutality triggered by the Minneapolis police killing of Black resident George Floyd. Avaaz found that “had Facebook tackled misinformation more aggressively and when the pandemic first hit in March 2020 (rather than waiting until October), the platform could have stopped 10.1 billion estimated views of content on the top-performing pages that repeatedly shared misinformation ahead of Election Day.” This allowed some of the disreputable pages to catch up in terms of social media interactions to major networks with far more followers like CNN in July and August, at the height of Black Lives Matter protests, according to the report…”