This article discusses a really fascinating problem that is exacerbating the fear accompanying the coronavirus epidemic – misinformation disseminated over social media. As described in the article, approximately 2 million tweets promoted conspiracy theories about the coronavirus have been circulated since the outbreak. While some of the information being circulated online is accurate, MIT’s Technology Review has dubbed this surge of misinformation as the first ‘infodemic’ on social media – one that promotes the spread of panic, racism, and ill-advised health strategies for avoiding the disease.
Some of the rumours being propagated include:
1) the disease was created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;
2) it is a bioweapon unleashed on an unwitting public;
3) the crisis has been invented by the Democrats in attempts to undermine the Donald Trump’s re-election bid, and that the party hopes to “kill millions of people”, as suggested by Donald Trump Jr., in order to make the president look as bad as possible. A similar sentiment has been echoed by shock-jock Rush Limbaugh.
Tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter introduced policies and features designed to direct users searching for information about the outbreak to more authoritative resources, including the CDC. Facebook has begun to ban posts that promote harmful misinformation, including cures for the disease (when the scientific community has yet to make any concrete progress in this respect). Twitter, for example, has suspended the account of one user linked to the promote of the aforementioned Gates Foundation rumour. Reddit ‘quarantined’ a subreddit associated with coronavirus misinformation. However, misinformation is still flourishing online, despite these efforts, in obscure YouTube channels and in private Facebook groups.
Will this mark the beginning of social media platforms taking a more active approach in regulating the content posted by their users? Or is it simply an exception for a global health emergency? Whether or not social media companies will now embrace a role as “arbiters of truth” going forward remains to be seen.
Here are some other relevant articles on the issue:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/27/facebook-google-twitter-scramble-stop-misinformation-about-coronavirus/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615184/the-coronavirus-is-the-first-true-social-media-infodemic/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/coronavirus-mike-pence-donald-trump-jr-democrats-millions-die
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/28/facebook-twitter-amazon-misinformation-coronavirus/