[ad_1]
Facebook is once again criticized for the proliferation of vaccine misinformation on its platform, after Joe Biden said tech giants like Facebook are “killing people” for not fixing the problem.
The White House has also focused on the “Dozen of Misinformation”: accounts that have been shown to be responsible for most of the anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms.
And while Facebook defended itself, claiming to have removed more than 18 million pieces of disinformation about Covid, Experts studying misinformation online say it still hasn’t solved the problem and lies about the vaccine still reaching millions of people.
“Facebook has said on several occasions that it is going to take action, but in reality we have seen a fragmentary application of its own community standards where some accounts are deleted from Instagram but not from Facebook and vice versa,” Imran said. Ahmed, CEO of the Center. for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the organization behind the study of the “dozen disinformation” cited by the White House. “There has been a systemic failure to solve this problem. “
This March report identified the 12 “superspreaders” accounts. A Facebook spokesperson said the company is permanently banning pages, groups and accounts that “repeatedly break our rules on Covid disinformation,” including “more than a dozen pages, groups and accounts of these people ”.
In the months following the publication of the study, the CCDH confirmed that social platforms had taken action against members of the “dozen”, deleting 35 accounts on social networks. They lost 41% of their subscribers – 5.8 million – but still have 8.4 million total subscribers and 62 active accounts.
Disinformation experts have condemned the platforms for deleting some of the most egregious accounts, but not others. For example, anti-vaccine figurehead Robert F Kennedy Jr still has an account on Facebook, despite being banned from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
Alternative medicine doctor Joseph Mercola also remains on Facebook, where he posted a number of vaccine skeptical posts in recent weeks that have been re-shared hundreds of times by his 1.7 million followers. He also used the platform to promote his anti-vaccination book The Truth About Covid-19.
Other research has also shown that the scale of the problem remains vast. Many messages incorrectly imply that the vaccine is not safe, not effective, or that it is not worth obtaining despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A predominant baseless conspiracy theory is that the vaccine implants users with a tracking chip.
Experts say these posts are particularly prevalent on Facebook in Spanish – an area of the platform that they say does not devote enough resources to moderation.
“Facebook needs a much better mechanism to stop the spread of false vaccine information, and they need to make sure they’re doing it in all languages,” said Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, a media equity group. She added that it is difficult to assess the extent of the problem when Facebook does not share the numbers.
According to social networks Responsible Tech Watchdog, 11 of the top 15 vaccine posts on Facebook last week contained misinformation or were anti-vaccine. According to FWIW, a newsletter that tracks digital ad spend, another prominent Facebook post on Covid-19 vaccines last week was a deeply inaccurate anti-vaccine rant from right-wing Candace Owens.
And the number one Facebook post nationwide on the vaccine on Friday was Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the removal of Covid disinformation “communism,” according to to the Facebook Crowdtangle internal analysis tool.
Taylor Greene – who is not named in the top 12 disinformation spreaders but is often reported for sharing lies about Covid and other issues – was temporarily suspended from Twitter on Monday. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Biden’s harsh condemnation comes as adoption of the Covid-19 vaccine levels off in the United States and new cases are on the rise again. The administration missed its July 4 target of 70% of Americans receiving at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. As of July 8, only 67% of American adults had received a dose of the vaccine, while 58% were fully immunized.
Federal officials are increasingly blaming declining vaccination rates and increasing cases in the United States on social media platforms that have failed to control misinformation related to vaccine reluctance. “There is a general shared narrative that the vaccine is not effective,” said Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, recently. “Health disinformation is a serious threat to public health. “
A Facebook spokesperson told The Guardian in a blog post by Guy Rosen, vice president of content policy, in which he claimed that users of the platform had shown increased acceptance rates for content. vaccines in the past six months.
“The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the United States have been or wish to be vaccinated against Covid-19,” he said. “President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason that goal was missed.”
The spread of health misinformation is the latest hurdle for social media companies as they contemplate potential antitrust actions. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said on Sunday that action should be taken on vaccine misinformation.
“Social media has been a big contributor to this misinformation – there’s no question about it,” she said. “When we have a public health crisis and people die every day, that’s enough. “
[ad_2]
Source link