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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."
So you're suggesting that Facebook is some kind of haven for stupid (third-grade education, Faux News addicted) people???
be doing something to identify and remove "fake news"?
Or are they becoming so desperate for new members they'll accept a group who advocates something stupider than flat earthers?
Utter bullshit. No degree of "border controls" (except "shoot them all, including citizens returning from vacation abroad, from a large distance and incinerate the bodies immediately") will have any effect here. Learn at least the basics of how things work before spouting utter nonsense.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... social media site found to contain subdivided groups of people with similar interests, sharing opinions within their own echo chambers.
FB is a haven for nearly every unsavory social movement. After all, one of its primary functions is to put like-minded people in touch with each other.
Don't expect them to crack down on anti-vax, or for that matter.any other movement they can make money from, unless it gets to the point where facilitating them alienates enough customers that they become a liability. So fae, only terrorists and hard core bigots have earned such treatment.
That is all advertising is after all. Even with regulation forcing them to do better, they'll still be fighting an uphill battle.
peer reviewed science shows an expected 100% mortality rate for those that get the measles vaccine, it's just as dangerous as dihydrogen oxide or facebook use
You've flirted with anti-vaxx as a division issue yourself SuperKendall are you a liberal?:
Superkendall:
"Since we're going into anecdotes I can say I used to get a bit more sick than that, about three times a winter with usually one incredibly bad illness lasting about a week. I stopped drinking soda, and drink water instead, and now I might get one mild cold a winter but sometimes not. I get about the same level of exercise and eat about the same (i.e. whatever the hell I want) with perhaps a touch more vegetables.
That's also all without ever having a flu vaccine shot. You have to wonder if just a few simple lifestyle changes across the U.S. would not totally eclipse any benefit from flu shots. And since I am not getting sick as often, I'm also not getting other people sick as often - the exact same benefit some claim for the vaccine approach. Only my overall health in all other matters is better too, unlike a flu vaccine which prevents only one thing, and temporarily at that (I have nothing against things like polio vaccines which make a ton of sense because they last forever)."
And again flirting with anti-vax as a trolling issue:
Superkendall:
"70% were willing to get vaccinations - so the study was proving them RIGHT. Yet a large number of them changed course AFTER they were told they were right... So it has zero to do with being "corrected". I think it has more to do with he messenger - scientists in general are now nearly despised, because of how they have misled people over decades now. From nutritional advice to the AGW cult, pretty much if a "scientist" tells you something now the population has learned there's an angle, and that angle is not meant for them. So who can blame them from shying away when the thing the scientists are saying is actually true for once?"
I think it's problematic to try and make such sweeping generalizations. There's no reason to deny that there are anti-vaxxers on both sides of the political spectrum. Hell, most people don't even vote and a lot of the ones that do aren't committed to a political party. The vaccine issue just isn't a political one. Even if more Republicans are anti-vax than Democrats, there's not enough of them to make it an issue among Republican politicians.
The one thing that all anti-vaccine people have in common is that they're woefully ignorant. That's why Trump questioned vaccines. It's because he's stupid, not because he's a Republican (plus, he says a lot of stupid things on purpose to pander to his stupid base—at this point he probably just attempts to say the stupidest thing possible whenever he's in front of a microphone because it somehow got him elected).
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
It is hard to imagine, impossible actually, this conversation happening 50 years ago. Circa 1950-1970, parents knew all too well the terror of polio from their childhood years, and the non-trivial, often major risks of measles and rubella, tetanus and diphtheria. If a few unfortunate people had severe side effects of a vaccine, it was of course very sad for that person or family, but a handful of adverse reactions was accepted and respected to protect tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of other lives.
It is easy to dismiss the non-vaxers as just kooks and idiots, as they probably are, but today, without large epidemics of those diseases to keep everyone just a little terrified, the issue becomes out-of-sight-out-of-mind. It is easy then for the herd to forget why we vaccinate, and what the price is for failing to do so. Of course, we have to decide if we castigate and chastise versus dismiss and forgive, those anti-vaxers who place their fear of a one-in-a-million complication above a sense of communal responsibility, participation, and shared risk.
A situation like this is ultimately self-correcting over a cycle of maybe 50 to a 100 years. If too many people fail to vaccinate for whatever reason, and epidemics of deadly disease flareup, then eventually enough people will get scared enough to make enough noise for government to step in or act responsibly as the voice of the overly vocal anti-vaxers die down or start singing the opposite tune. It will just take one loud mouthed or well connected anti-vaxer to have their precious Johnny or Janey die from measles or tetanus or be crippled by polio to start singing a different tune. Unfortunately, public perception and stupidity or governmental cowardice and ineptitude create propagation delays and phase lags in the response to such large social issues, first too slow to act, then too far of an overshoot, such that an even keel steady-as-she goes balance cannot be maintained. Sadly, un-moderated un-referreed adult-free Lord-of-the Flies platforms like Facebook make it all too easy for the kooks to have too much influence.
There is though a simple and elegant solution. If you choose to eschew the common good and fail to participate in the general welfare, so be it. But, if you make your own rules, you must live by those rules. Don't want to vaccinate - fine. But, if your poor Johnny and Janey gets sick with the measles or any such preventable disease, tough, no insurance for you. It's like the Little Red Hen. If you don't want to participate in making the bread, you don't get to eat the bread. Want to save poor little Johnny's life, or spend years rehabilitating him for paralysis or hearing loss or months on a ventilator? Well, sad for the poor kid, but the parents got what they bargained for, and they have to pay for it all themselves, no dipping into the societal funds available to help those who acted responsibly in the interests of the greater good. No vaccination, no problem, but if you get sick from that, No insurance for you - so sayeth Yev Kassem.
The antivaxxers I know are batshit crazy uneducated libertarians. It's a lack of education and tendency towards extremism that creates antivaxxers.
Do you ignore a cancer metastasizing in your body because it's only a fraction of the total mass of your body?
dom
Facebook is a total shitshow. Half the people think it needs to do more to prevent spread of certain (possibly false) information. The other half hate it because they think it is censoring the truth and has a bias.
I feel like Facebook (the platform, not necessarily the company) is basically the AOL of the 2010's, and destined for the same fate. A lot of sane people are walking away from facebook. Soon it will just be old people who are uncomfortable with technology (like AOL).
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This is the result of freedom of speech. It's a Good Thing. Sure, go ahead and make laws that outlaw incitement to illegal activities, but you'd better not make a law against telling people what to believe.
If you think that having people be unvaccinated is such a danger to public health, then go ahead and make vaccination a legal requirement. Banning people from even advocating against vaccination is a more extreme step than that.
Yes, I get it: we're not talking about all free speech here, only speech via Facebook. They can restrict speech much more than can the government via corporate policies. But I'm sure they don't want to moderate postings more than they have to, just for cost reasons, and do you really want some opaque and unaccountable Facebook system deciding what we're allowed to read?
The solution is for people to learn how to distinguish good reporting from propaganda. Not everyone's going to be able to do this, or even want to, but having some percentage of people fall for lies is better than trying to filter what everyone reads.
Always amazes me to see the Slashdotters ignorance on vaccines and their malice to those that disagree with them!
> The one thing that all anti-vaccine people have in common is that they're woefully ignorant.
> Well the anti-vax people scream that it's their right not to vaccinate their spawn. Our mistake is we continue to pretend their rights matter.
I'd suggest folks read the following:
https://theconversation.com/anti-vaxxers-admitting-that-vaccinology-is-an-imperfect-science-may-be-a-better-way-to-defeat-sceptics-111794
which suggests a bit more humility given the imperfect record of vaccine science.
Here are some well supported facts:
1. Lower rates of vaccination are often found in professional-class neighborhoods (so much for ignorance of anti-vaxxers)
2. Many anti-vaxxers are actually ex-vaxxers who have had a child of themselves or friends and family harmed by vaccines.
3. The law of the USA says that "vaccines are unavoidablly unsafe", so much so they are the only product for which the makers have no product liability
4. While there is extensive scientific literature and historical evidence supporting that *most* vaccines do effectively suppress their target diseases:
4.1.: the Flu vaccine and the HPV vaccines are not among them, and
4.2: their is also extensive scientific literature describing the mechanisms for harmful side-effects of vaccines
5. The medical marvels of the 20th century are good sewerage and clean water, contributing an order of magnitude more to reduction in deaths than vaccines.
The science of the effectiveness of (most) vaccines but also unfortunately the science showing potential for harm from vaccines to some people are both substantial. Governments over the world have claimed for decades that Roundup and Glyphosate are perfectly safe, and just now its coming out that they promote cancer. Earlier, we where told the same about smoking cigarettes.