Facebook will expand its symptom tracking survey globally to measure the spread of COVID-19

The university does not share any information about symptoms back to Facebook.In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that initial findings shared by Carnegie Mellon correlate with public data about confirmed cases of COVID-19, an important signal that symptom surveys will soon be able to forecast the disease’s spread. If Facebook users report symptoms in their own countries at rates similar to their participation in the United States, the data could prove to be an effective map of potential hotspots around the globe, said Ryan Tibshirani, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon who is helping to lead the school’s partnership with Facebook.In an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg said that global maps could serve as a reality check in places where elected officials have been slow to acknowledge the spread of COVID-19 within their borders.“Some of these governments, frankly, are not excited about the world knowing how many actual cases there might be, or indicators of how it’s spreading in their countries,” Zuckerberg said.