Why did Facebook apologize to Nigerians?

On October 22, 2020, tech giant, Facebook - which also owns Instagram - apologized to Nigerians for wrongly flagging pictures of a bloodied Nigerian flag as "false."

Anytime people would post that picture, a Facebook prompt would read, "“The same false information was reviewed in another post by fact-checkers. There may be small differences. Independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact.”

Facebook based its fact-check on a CNN News Chyron from Don Lemon's show, which made a lot of Americans believe that the deadly virus, SARS was killing Nigerians, rather than the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. This happens because Check Your Fact, which handles some of Facebook's fact-check endeavours was involved.

Due to this, Facebook had to issue an apology. A representative of the company also told Tech Cabal that, "We are aware that Facebook’s automated systems were incorrectly flagging content in support of #EndSARS, and for this we are deeply sorry. This issue has since been resolved, and we apologize for letting down our community in such a time of need."

This comes on the back of the global cause to stem the spread of Fake News. A few days ago, Pulse Nigeria reported Twitter's approach to fake news. The World Health Organization has also partnered with Wikipedia to stem the spread of COVID-19-related fake news.