Who spreads most of the misinformation about the COVID vaccine on social media

About two-thirds of anti-vaccination misinformation is shared by a dozen social media influencers, according to a recently released report and resurfaced this month in light of comments from US President Joe Biden.

Over the weekend, Biden accused Facebook and other social media platforms of “killing people” by spreading lies about the coronavirus vaccines.

“Influence is not democratized on social media but concentrated,” CCDH founder and CEO Imran Ahmed told The Jerusalem Post. “A small number of people have a disproportionate influence on social media. “

This concept also applies to other sectors, such as anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of hate speech, he said.

Ahmed pointed out what happened during the recent escalation between Israel and Hamas, where a small but strong group of anti-Israel influencers took to social media to condemn the Jewish state and introduce themes anti-Semitic in the story.

“You can find the source point if you work to follow it back,” he said. “It’s a small number of websites and influencers that are retweeted and shared.”

The organization’s COVID analysis focused on 812,000 anti-vaccine messages shared on Facebook or Twitter between February 1 and March 16, 2021. Two-thirds of the messages were shared by what the CCDH calls the ” Dozen of Disinformation ”: Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Ty and Charlene Bollinger, Sherri Tenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins.

Mercola is described as an “anti-vaccine entrepreneur” with 3.6 million social media followers. He sells food supplements and so-called fake medicine as alternatives to vaccines.

The Bollinger’s sell books and DVDs on vaccines, cancer, and COVID-19. They promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates plans to inject everyone with microchips as part of a vaccination program.

Islam, for example, promoted the controversial idea that COVID vaccines make women infertile in a tweet last June and wrote: “I beat COVID in 48 hours. Here’s how: 1 – No solid foods, only hot soups with vegetable broth, no dairy products, lots of spices including turmeric and cayenne pepper. 2 – About two gallons of water each day = 4 gallons of water that I drank in two days. 3 to 4000 mg of vit. C every four hours.

On Facebook, their posts accounted for 73% of the content and on Twitter 17%.

Researchers have linked vaccine misinformation shared on social media platforms to increased hesitation about vaccines.

“Exposure to even a small amount of vaccine misinformation online has been shown by the Vaccine Confidence Project to reduce the number of people willing to take a Covid vaccine by up to 8.8%,” the report says.

Unvaccinated individuals are more likely to contract coronavirus, develop serious illness and die.

Although the names and profiles of the dozen were presented to Facebook, including the business owner, when the report was first published, Facebook failed to remove the majority of those profiles, Ahmed said. at the Post.

“Despite repeated violations of the terms of service of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, nine of the dozen disinformation remains on all three platforms, while only three have been completely removed from a single platform,” the report.

The best way to stop the spread of this harmful content is to remove these profiles and the organizations they control or fund from social media, as they violate their terms and services anyway, Ahmed said, adding that the policies put implemented by Facebook and Twitter has been largely ineffective.

“Research conducted by the CCDH last year showed that platforms do not act on 95% of the misinformation about COVID and vaccines reported to them,” the report said.

Gabriel Weimann, professor of communications and senior researcher at IDC Herzliya’s International Counterterrorism Institute, which released reports calling on TikTok to allow increasing numbers of anti-Semitic videos on its platform, praised the report. CCDH.

“They are calling for action by naming these dozens of distributors, which I think is one of the promising ways to fight back – not just in the case of COVID, but in general,” he said.

The message should be that even in liberal democratic societies, despite their desire to allow freedom of speech and communication, “we have and should have red lines that should not be crossed,” Weimann said.

Responding to Biden’s claims, Facebook VP Integrity Gary Rosen said, “While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a holistic approach. of society to end this pandemic. “

The CCDH has proposed six ways in which social networks can act against the scourge of disinformation: “Establish a clear threshold for coercive action; display corrective messages to users exposed to misinformation; add warning screens when users click on links to disinformation sites; institute an accountability API to allow experts on sensitive and important topics to perform the human analysis that will ultimately make Facebook’s AI more efficient; platforms can also offer advice to users wishing to demystify information without clashing with authorities; and ban private and secret anti-vaccine Facebook groups.

“We distinguish between anti-vaccines and [the] hesitant about the vaccine, ”concluded Ahmed. “Anti-vaccines are creating an industry in which they profit from the spread of false information about COVID, vaccines and doctors. Most people fall victim to being bombarded with misinformation.