Ideas for Firefox to be helpful in Coronavirus pandemic

One of problems in coronavirus pancdemic is disinformation and websites that are publuishing unverified news, drugs, or even Superstitions.
I think Firefox can be like a Fact checker and work with Fact checking groups, WHO, FDA,…
Now when Firefox user go to a unsecure website, firefox shows a red screen that shows warning
in addition Firefox shows a warning on left side of address bar when a site don’t suppport SSL/TLS or a website using trackers,…
I think after launch of Tracking prevention systems in browsers, we need a fact checker system in both browsers and search engines. Both of them should show warning to their users about disinormation and misinformation.
I described my idea. Whats your idea? How Firefox products and services can be helpful in pandemics?

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One of Mozilla’s most powerful leverage points in Firefox is having control over and being able to post content to the default home page / new tab page. Directing people to a “hub” of Coronavirus content (and having to maintain that) may be problematic and open Moz up to greater liability.

I’d propose cycling through “ads” to known good resources.

The other day our local news ran a spot that used dots and animation to explain the spread of viruses, starting with measles and smallpox, then onto COVID-19. It then did a great job of illustrating how social distancing can save lives. I thought, “Wow. This was simple and straightforward, I wish everyone could see this!”

I’m uncertain that we’ll be able to label content as trustworthy and untrustworthy in any reasonable time frame, if at all. That would require a lot of resources, human resources and some known network of trusted individuals.

I think the bigger and more effective bang for the buck is directing users to known good content. This way people would be equipped with facts that would help counter the the misinformation.

Both the ads and the content should be super basic, appealing and approachable to children (say, 8 year olds) as we cannot assume people to have a high degree of engagement and focus.


Bit of an aside, but perhaps to further illustrate my point…
In the US the folks whose job it is to identify counterfeit money do not spend much time on studying counterfeit dollars, instead they familiarize themselves thoroughly with the real thing.

There’s any number of ways a fake can be wrong, but trying to cover them all is going to be endless/impossible. Being familiar with the real thing is the most effective way to identify the counterfeit.

All that to say, I think it’s a better use of our limited resources to attempt to educate with known, trustworthy (and approachable) information than trying to run down the prolific and ballooning misinformation.

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That made me think that we could maybe use the about:home page to show a banner with a message and link to the local governement official resources website (e.g in Canada it’ll be canada.ca/coronavirus).

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