2020
Failure to Act: How Tech Giants Continue to Defy Calls to Rein in Vaccine Misinformation
Center for Countering Digital Hate; Restless Development (Organization)
From the Introduction: "By the time a Coronavirus vaccine is widely available, tens of billions of dollars will have been expended researching and producing it. Vaccines are among the safest, most effective and consequential inventions in medical history. They have saved countless people from disease and death. And yet, despite scientific consensus, vaccines are opposed by a growing social media ecosystem of Counter-Enlightenment actors, snake oil salesmen and the misinformed. This Anti-Vaxx industry, which CCDH [Center for Countering Digital Hate] calculates is worth a billion dollars a year to social media companies, is countered by governments, scientists and fact-based journalism, and yet Coronavirus vaccine hesitancy is growing. Tech giants realise it would be toxic if people knew how they nurture this deadly ecosystem, so they have made big claims on dealing with Coronavirus misinformation. For this report, we sought to verify their claims. Restless Development and CCDH trained young volunteers in how to identify misinformation. They scoured Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, recording and reporting misinformation through the platforms' interfaces. Of the 912 posts flagged and reported by volunteers, fewer than 1 in 20 posts containing misinformation were dealt with (4.9%). Much debate about misinformation on social media is about automated algorithms and detection. But this exercise shows that even when companies are handed misinformation on a silver platter, they fail to act. Alongside this report, we polled US citizens' attitudes towards a Coronavirus vaccine."

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