Disinformation online "ruins lives", according to FullFact.
FullFact's warning
The UK-based fact-checking organisation has teamed up with tech firms to help fight disinformation and has explained its potential dangers.
FullFact said: "Bad information ruins lives. In the wake of the US election, we saw how false claims and conspiracy theories directly contributed to assaults on democracy."
The organisation thinks it's important that democratic institutions are held to account.
Fullfact told the BBC: "Internet companies should be held to account by democratic institutions for their policies on misinformation. But more broadly we believe these decisions should be made through open, democratic and transparent processes, rather than by commercial interests."
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has recently proposed limited reforms to help fight against disinformation.
The billionaire businessman has discussed the issue with politicians in the US, with many people seeing the storming of the US Capitol as a tipping point against disinformation.
He said: "We believe Congress should consider making platforms' intermediary liability protection for certain types of unlawful content conditional on companies' ability to meet best practice to combat the spread of this content."
Hateful content constitutes a very small percentage of what Facebook users see, according to Zuckerberg, who also pointed out that political posts account for just six percent of what US users saw in their news feeds.
The Facebook boss added that the social networking platform had removed more than 12 million pieces of false content relating to the coronavirus crisis.
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