If Facebook wants to stop the spread of anti-vaxxers, it could start by not taking their advertising dollars »Nieman Journalism Lab

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It is difficult to track the growing flow of reports and data on misinformation, misinformation, partisan content and literacy in the news. This weekly overview shows the highlights of what you may have missed.

The WHO has designated anti-vaxxers as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019. But is the threat from the Internet crazy exaggerated? Or are there certain things in the anti-vaccination movement that make it particularly dangerous?

This debate is the health version of an argument that we often see these days: covering too far right extremists and extremists – even in very critical articles – gives them the oxygen they need to become more powerful and more common. "The simple fact that anti-vaxxer beliefs are treacherous and false does not make them worthy of attention nationwide," Daniel Engber written in a Slate article in which he warns against catastrophism. "Vaccine refusals are still well outside the mainstream." (Or, sometimes, pretty close to mainstream!)

Engber's argument:

The anti-vaxxer movement is not really on the rise all over America, and measles has not really resurfaced clinical oversight nor is it a fatal threat to everyone's well-being. The outbreak in Clark County may be worrisome, but it is a local story: low vaccination rates in the region, made possible by respect for the marginal beliefs of residents and suspicious policies across the country. State, have made this outbreak possible. But trying to link it to a nascent crisis in America is, at best, a waste of time and trust for readers. At worst, they could give a boost to the anti-vaxxer movement by exaggerating its extent and influence; or they could distract us from other more important barriers to immunization, such as unequal health care. "

I am still thinking about this, but at least my personal experience tells me that health-related disinformation enters my orbit much more often than false political information. It's ubiquitous on the internet for moms in a way that we can not recognize if we look at it primarily through national reporting. This week, the Washington Post and the Guardian both examined Facebook's difficulties and inefficiency in the face of misinformation about immunization. From the Washington Post Taylor Telford:

A working paper published in November by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined Facebook's role in spreading false information about vaccines. The newspaper concluded that Facebook's ban on fake reports has resulted in a decrease in the share of anti-vaccine content. But in anti-vaccination circles, ads are not the main problem – people are. They found that anti-vaccination groups on Facebook tended to spread the same misleading links and science as junk food, and ended up spreading information to the general public through preferences, sharing, and sharing. word of mouth.

"The majority of inaccurate information about vaccines is transmitted by individuals – and the majority of this misinformation by a few individuals – shares the message biologically," Catherine Tucker, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the NBER's article, said in an e-mail addressed to the Washington Post. "This is a much more difficult problem to solve because trying to stop this type of social sharing creates tension in an attempt to preserve freedom of expression."

The gardians Ed Pilkington and Jessica Glenza took a closer look at some of the private groups where misinformation about immunization is shared.

One group, vitamin C and orthomolecular medicine for optimal health, tells its users that this is "not an anti-vax group". Her boss, Katie Gironda, said, "This group should remain neutral on the subject of the vaccine."

However, anyone eligible to be part of this closed group of about 49,000 approved members will find an abundance of material involving vaccine safety. They will also find recommendations for alternative remedies that falsely claim to protect against diseases.

Gironda is listed on LinkedIn as the CEO of a Colorado online business selling high-dose vitamin C. Members of his closed group are encouraged to "shop now" – in one click, they are directly linked to his company, Revitalize Wellness.

The site sells vitamin C powder in bulk. Clients are encouraged to give children aged 2 to 3 grams a day while the recommended daily intake is 15 mg. Bags of 24 pounds of powder cost $ 432.

Revitalize Wellness has a disclaimer stating that its products "are not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent disease". But during a conversation with members of his Facebook group closed, Gironda gives the opposite advice.

"Vitamin C has an incredible track record in fighting the same diseases that the vaccines were made for," she wrote.

In another entry, she says, "I think the disadvantages outweigh the benefits of vaccines … By greed, they have become a weapon. As long as they are no longer safe and not motivated by money, I will avoid all vaccines. "

What do you do when your parents are anti-vaxxers and you are not? You take the internet, of course. For Pacific Standard, Emily Moon wrote about how children of parents who do not believe in vaccines regain control by visiting sites like Reddit to learn more about ways to get vaccinated when they are under 18 years old.

At the moment, parents have easy access to anti-vaxxer propaganda, thanks to sites like Facebook. Michael's mother, for example, credits vaccines for a family-related inflammatory disease, although "all the health professionals I spoke with told me that vaccines do not trigger sarcoidosis," he says. Alex, the 18-year-old in Washington, said that every time they go to immunization, their mom will try to get them to watch the pseudoscientific documentary VAXXED, directed by Andrew Wakefield, the former discredited doctor who has wrote the fraudulent study. "It all sounds ridiculous," Alex says.

As this misinformation continues to flourish elsewhere on the Internet, forums such as r / legaladvice are a rare haven. Even some of the most severe comments helped; Charly, who posted at the age of 17 and lived in Canada, said that he began to question his parents' position after seeing jokes and rants against anti-vaxxers on Reddit. "I started to feel bad about my unvaccinated existence," she says. "It's not the best of reasons, but it's really what's happening to me." Like Charly, many plaintive requests for advice contain a lot of shame. An unvaccinated user reported trying not to tell anyone. Another writes in the comments: "You do not have to blush because your parents do not vaccinate you. It's not something you decided to do research on and you decided not to do it, you did the whole thing of being a kid

Is the Facebook fact-checking program a disaster or, IDK, widely acceptable? It depends on who you ask. Brooke BinkowskiThe former editor of Snopes (who withdrew from the fact-checking program earlier this month) recently told BuzzFeed that participating in this program was "like playing a doomed game of whack-a-mole ". In her article, she offers a fairly detailed description of the nature of work.

We had access to a tool built into our personal Facebook accounts and accessed in this way (as far as I'm concerned) and a long list of stories identified as checks was created. We were free to ignore the list or mark the stories as "true", "false" or "mixed". (Facebook then added a "satire" category after what I like to call "the Babylon Bee incident," where a piece was incorrectly labeled false.

It was clear from the start that this list was generated via an algorithm. It contained titles and URLs, as well as a graph indicating their popularity and the time spent on the site. However, there were some confusing aspects. We often received the same story multiple times on different sites, which is to some extent expected, as many of the most persistent stories have been recycled multiple times. This is what Facebook likes to call "engagement".

But no matter how many times we've labeled them "fake," the stories would come back to appear without changing anything else. It is often enough for us to know clearly that our efforts are not really helping and that we are headed for some type of story – and, we suppose, far from others.

What are the algorithmic criteria that generated the lists of items to check? We have never known, and no one has ever told us.

These repetitive stories, however, showed a tendency: they were almost all "undesirable" information, not the extremely corrosive information that should have been given priority. We would be asked to check if the story of a woman arrested for leaving her children in the car for hours while she was eating at the buffet was true; Meanwhile, a flood of false antisemitic stories by George Soros was never on the list. I never could understand why, but it was perhaps a feature, not a bug.

The current partners, Agence France-Presse and Full Fact, however, told Digiday that everything was going well, especially if you like to demystify the stories of horses.

"We want Facebook to share data transparently and broadly. It is clear that Facebook can share more information, "said Will Moy, director of Full Fact. "We'll tell them that's what we expect from a responsible Internet company."

To date, Full Fact has only verified 10 stories on Facebook, including demystifying a shared image over 25,000 times on a horse living in a Preston apartment in Lancashire, which turned out to be a d a model horse in a window in Illinois, US The most pernicious claims include a false image stating that illegal immigrants and refugees can claim a much larger annual profit than British retirees, shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook .

This week, Facebook has removed "168 Facebook accounts, 28 pages and eight Instagram accounts to be engaged in targeted unauthentic behavior targeting people in Moldova." The Facebook message on the pullout was remarkable for its level of detail and for the fact that Facebook linked the activity to Moldovan. government:

The administrators of the page and the account holders have generally published articles on local news and political issues such as compulsory education of Russian or English and reunification with Romania. They also shared manipulated photos, stories of contention and satire and imitated a page from the local fact-checking company that called other pages to spread false information. Although those responsible for this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review revealed that part of this activity was related to Moldovan government employees.

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