Facebook approved a series of paid ads on its platforms that claimed everything from COVID-19 being a hoax to the idea that drinking bleach will keep you healthy.

Key points: Facebook approved seven ads making increasingly dangerous claims

Facebook approved seven ads making increasingly dangerous claims The tech writer who ran the experiment says Facebook is leaning hard on automated systems, which "don't seem to be working just right"

The tech writer who ran the experiment says Facebook is leaning hard on automated systems, which "don't seem to be working just right" Facebook says it has taken "aggressive steps" to combat coronavirus misinformation

The ads were part of an experiment by American tech writer Kaveh Waddell earlier this month to test the social media giant's early ability to stop coronavirus misinformation as it was starting to spread.

The ads were never published or seen by the public.

In all, Waddell received approval for seven ads that made increasingly outrageous claims, including that people under 30 were "safe" and that social distancing didn't make "any difference at all".

The fake ads were designed to test Facebook's approval process. ( Supplied: Consumer Reports )

"The reason I put them into ads is because Facebook vets every ad before it can go up onto the site," Waddell told the ABC.

"Unlike a post that you or I would put on our own Facebook pages, you hit post and off it goes, Facebook has a review process for ads."

The experiment worked like this:

Waddell set up a new Facebook account with a fake name

Waddell set up a new Facebook account with a fake name He then made a page for a fictitious organisation called the "Self Preservation Society"

He then made a page for a fictitious organisation called the "Self Preservation Society" He wrote the fake ads for the page and submitted them for approval

He wrote the fake ads for the page and submitted them for approval Once approved, they went into a queue ready to be shared

Some of the ads were approved within minutes, Waddell said.

"The ad manager that I was using publishes out to Facebook and Instagram and into Stories and into just pretty much every advertising slot you can think of on the entire Facebook ecosystem," he said.

"So if you're just seeing health tips floating around, it's probably smart to verify those."

After Waddell contacted Facebook about the experiment, it disabled the account he had created and confirmed all seven ads violated its policies.

A reliance on algorithms

Ads are a major money maker for the tech giant, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. It reportedly earned $30 billion in ad revenue on Instagram alone last year.

It has strict policies around what can be said in advertisements and has also released specific guidelines around COVID-19, including banning the very things Waddell's ads included, like claims that are designed to discourage treatment and false cures like drinking bleach.

All seven fake ads violated Facebook's policies. ( Supplied: Consumer Reports )

Waddell suspects part of the breakdown in enforcement is because Facebook relies heavily on automated ad-screening systems.

It does have human reviewers, but they are mainly used to improve and train the automated systems.

At the time of the experiment, many of them had been sent home due to coronavirus isolation measures and had not yet been equipped to keep working.

"So Facebook is leaning extra hard on its automated systems right now and some of them don't seem to be working just right," Waddell said.

"It takes a little while, especially when a new form of misinformation starts cropping up to be able to build the defences against them.

"With something like COVID where the misinformation didn't exist as recently as, say, December, the systems are just not there right now."

Facebook says it has taken "aggressive steps" specifically to combat coronavirus misinformation and also try to get accurate information to its users.

Last week it announced it will soon let people know if they liked, reacted to, or commented on posts with misinformation that was removed by moderators, and it will direct them to information about virus myths debunked by the World Health Organisation.

"We have removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of harmful misinformation and applied warning labels from independent fact-checkers to 40 million posts in the month of March alone," the company told the ABC in a statement.

"So far, we've directed over 2 billion people to resources from health authorities through our COVID-19 Information Centre — with over 350 million people clicking through to learn more."

It didn't say if anything had changed in the way it monitors ads for policy breaches since Waddell's experiment, but said it was "always working to improve our enforcement systems".

"We will continue to work closely with governments, other tech companies and third parties to remove harmful misinformation and promote official guidance from local health authorities," its statement read.

When celebrities get involved

While Mr Waddell may have tested Facebook's systems, a greater challenge is those bent on gaming it.

Axel Bruns is a professor at Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre.

He said his analysis had shown that people will go to great lengths to figure out why a post has been rejected, and then try to re-upload it.

"So they will try a number of variations of the same content and then perhaps finally succeed and get through Facebook's upload barriers," he said.

Couple that with the sheer scale of content being uploaded, Professor Bruns said, and platforms like Facebook had a mammoth task on their hands.

What's more, his analysis has shown that celebrities, sports stars and even news media have to take some responsibility for the spread of misinformation.

"In much of our analysis, what we're seeing is that the initial posts sharing conspiracy theories are not getting a significant amount of traction," Professor Bruns said.

"Where they become much more significant is where they are being shared on, passed on, by groups, by users, by audiences with existing large networks.

"We've been seeing activity by tabloid news outlets, for instance, we've been seeing amplification by celebrities, by sports stars, by some politicians."

And takedowns will only get you so far.

"They might actually validate the conspiracy theorists who are pushing them … it might seem to them that is the government, or the platform, or some deep state entity working against them and therefore they're onto something," he said.

"So there's only so much that takedowns and fact checks can actually do to reach the hardcore conspiracy theorists."