Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Becomes 'A Haven For the Anti-Vaccination Movement' (siliconvalley.com)
"As a disturbing number of measles outbreaks crop up around the United States, Facebook is facing challenges combating widespread misinformation about vaccinations on its platform," reported the Washington Post Wednesday, saying Facebook "has become a haven for the anti-vaccination movement" and that "the rise of 'anti-vaxx' Facebook groups is overlapping with a resurgence of measles" in the U.S.
Facebook has publicly declared that fighting misinformation is one of its top priorities. But when it comes to policing misleading content about vaccinations, the site faces a thorny challenge. The bulk of anti-vaccination content doesn't violate Facebook's community guidelines for inciting "real-world harm," according to a spokesperson, and the site's algorithms often promote unscientific pages or posts about the issue...
Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, recently met with Facebook strategists about dealing with public health issues, including misinformation about vaccines, on the platform... "Facebook isn't responsible for changing quacks but they do have an opportunity to change the way information is served up." But Facebook's algorithms often promote anti-vaccination content over widely accepted, scientifically backed posts or pages about vaccinations. A recent investigation from the Guardian found that Facebook search results regarding vaccines were "dominated by anti-vaccination propaganda...." Facebook also accepted advertising revenue from Vax Truther, Anti-Vaxxer, Vaccines Revealed and Michigan for Vaccine Choice, among others, according to another investigation from the Guardian [which found Facebook even offers the ability to target 900,000 users that Facebook has helpfully identified as interested in "vaccine controversies."]
Last month YouTube promised to stop recommending videos that "could misinform users in harmful ways," and later told the Guardian that that would include anti-vaccine videos. The Guardian also noted this week that one anti-vaccination group on Facebook has over 150,000 members. But Facebook told the Post Wednesday that by not deleting the pseudoscience, they're actually giving their users an opportunity to speak up on their own and share factual counter-arguments themselves.
By Thursday Facebook added that it was "exploring" additional steps, including "reducing or removing this type of content from recommendations, including 'Groups You Should Join,' and demoting it in search results, while also ensuring that higher quality and more authoritative information is available."
Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, recently met with Facebook strategists about dealing with public health issues, including misinformation about vaccines, on the platform... "Facebook isn't responsible for changing quacks but they do have an opportunity to change the way information is served up." But Facebook's algorithms often promote anti-vaccination content over widely accepted, scientifically backed posts or pages about vaccinations. A recent investigation from the Guardian found that Facebook search results regarding vaccines were "dominated by anti-vaccination propaganda...." Facebook also accepted advertising revenue from Vax Truther, Anti-Vaxxer, Vaccines Revealed and Michigan for Vaccine Choice, among others, according to another investigation from the Guardian [which found Facebook even offers the ability to target 900,000 users that Facebook has helpfully identified as interested in "vaccine controversies."]
Last month YouTube promised to stop recommending videos that "could misinform users in harmful ways," and later told the Guardian that that would include anti-vaccine videos. The Guardian also noted this week that one anti-vaccination group on Facebook has over 150,000 members. But Facebook told the Post Wednesday that by not deleting the pseudoscience, they're actually giving their users an opportunity to speak up on their own and share factual counter-arguments themselves.
By Thursday Facebook added that it was "exploring" additional steps, including "reducing or removing this type of content from recommendations, including 'Groups You Should Join,' and demoting it in search results, while also ensuring that higher quality and more authoritative information is available."
What is worse than government deciding on your behalf what is wrong and what is right?
Private transnational company doing that.
The harm that acceptance of this kind of "filtering" could do far outweighs anything uneducated conspiracy theorists could.
No. Conspiracy theories thrive because people are emotional and refuse to believe things that go against their interests, and want a justification of why things aren't the way they want. The more complex the explanation is, the more people believe it's a conspiracy.
Take for example Nikola Tesla. There is, especially in Latin America, a huge amount of people who believe in free energy (curiously they call it "energias libres" meaning free as in free speech, when they mean "energias gratis" meaning free as in free beer). For these people, Nikola Tesla was a messiah. He was the person who INVENTED electricity. Then he was stopped by the most evil person in history: Thomas Edison, who only wanted money and didn't know wany science. And because of this, we are now forced to pay for electricity. If only Tesla could have developed his "energy tower", we'd have free electricity for all mankind. But Tesla died, and thus, we can't have free power anymore. There is no other person who could develop this. We're doomed now. Damn Edison!
That's what they honestly believe. It's all a conspiracy of corporations protected by governments (especially the US government), who want to force us to pay for something Tesla demonstrated is free. This is the conspiracy theory and it comes from people who just want to blame high energy costs to other factors, and not the fact that they mostly live in poor countries with low salaries.
The same goes for people who believe in "the car that runs on water and the patent was bought by Big Oil and the inventor killed".
Youtube is full of "free energy" videos of people turning lightbulbs on in thin air and have millions of views and thousands of comments claiming it's not fake, it's real, and thus, this proves everything Tesla said was right. But they're not Tesla, so they can't make it large scale.
There is always the "messiah complex" thing with conspiracy theorists. That things are "invented" by lone wolfes at their houses, and not in university or corporate labs (duh, obviously if they did that, corporations would steal their ideas).
Moon landing conspiracy theorists come up with the wildest explanations of why the moon landing is fake. One of them, I remember, was from a poor country and said "wow, we barely could make TV work at a few kilometers and it was really difficult, expensive, and in black and white, and this was in 1978, but the americans not only sent a rocket to the moon but also transmitted from the moon IN COLOR? It's obviously fake". This person wasn't even aware that "americans" had color TV in 1953, 16 years before people went to the moon. Or that americans sent TV signals to satellites in space in 1962. And those satellites were used to broadcast the moon landing live across the world. No. He lived in a poor country, with poor infrastructure, and he had a poor experience. So it must have been the same way for everyone everywhere.
In short, it's not about "official narrative", it's about people refusing to believe in the evidence presented, because they deeply believe in something.
Oh and the USA being in the middle of it is enough to prove the conspiracy. Russia though, is cool. Russia is our friend. Putin is a nice person but he's demonized by the USA. Venezuela is broke because the USA's sanctions (the country has been broke for years even though the US had no sanctions against them until a less than month ago, and the US is the biggest money supplier, paying Venezuela with actual money, while Russia is getting free oil from interests from loans given by Russia being paid with raw oil, at a rate they "restructure" the debt every few years and keep a continuous supply of free oil)