Twitter’s resolve to prevent enforcement of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, quietly posted on the site’s regulations page and indexed as of November 23, 2022, is cause for great fear for researchers and public fitness experts about the imaginable repercussions.
Incorrect health information is not new. An old case is incorrect information about an alleged, but now refuted, link between autism and the MMR vaccine in a debunked study published in 1998. This incorrect information has serious consequences for public health. Tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccines faced a higher incidence of pertussis in the last twentieth century, for example.
As a researcher who studies social media, I believe that reducing content moderation is a vital step in the wrong direction, especially in light of the uphill war social media platforms face to combat incorrect information and incorrect information. opposed to incorrect medical information.
Misinformation on social media
There are 3 key differences between past bureaucracy of disinformation and misinformation on social media.
First, incorrect social media information spreads at a much greater scale, speed, and reach.
Second, sensational and emotional content is more likely to go viral on social media, making lies less difficult to spread than the truth.
Third, virtual platforms like Twitter play a gatekeeper role in how they aggregate, curate and extend content. This means that incorrect information about topics that trigger emotions, such as vaccines, can draw attention without problems.
The spread of incorrect information about the pandemic has been dubbed an infodemic by the World Health Organization.
There is abundant evidence that incorrect information related to COVID-19 on social media is reducing vaccine acceptance. Public fitness experts have warned that misinformation on social media is seriously hampering progress toward herd immunity, weakening society’s ability to cope with new variants of COVID-19. 19
Misinformation on social media is fueling public doubts about vaccine protection. Studies show that doubts about the COVID-19 vaccine are due to a false impression of herd immunity and ideals in conspiracy theories.
Fighting misinformation
Social media platforms’ content moderation policies and positions towards disinformation are to combat misinformation. In the absence of physically powerful content moderation policies on Twitter, curating and advising algorithmic content is very likely to stimulate the spread of incorrect information through the expansion of echo chamber effects. , for example, through the exacerbation of partisan differences in the exposure of content.
Algorithmic bias in advisory systems may also further accentuate global health care disparities and racial disparities in vaccine uptake.
There is evidence that some less regulated platforms, such as Gab, can increase the effect of untrusted resources and generate incorrect information about COVID-19. There is also evidence that the disinformation ecosystem can ensnare other people who use social media platforms that invest in content moderation to settle for incorrect information from less moderate platforms.
So the danger is that there will only be more anti-vaccine rhetoric on Twitter, but such poisonous communication may spread to other online platforms that can invest in combating medical misinformation.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s COVID-19 vaccine monitor shows that the public accepts as true COVID-19 data from authoritative resources as governments have significantly declined, with serious public health consequences. For example, the percentage of Republicans who said they accept the Food and Drug Administration as true rose from 62% to 43% from December 2020 to October 2022.
These priorities require partnerships between healthcare organizations and social media platforms to expand rules of practice to combat healthcare misinformation. Developing and enforcing effective content moderation policies requires making plans and resources.
In light of what researchers know about incorrect COVID-19 data on Twitter, the announcement that the company will no longer ban incorrect data related to COVID-19 is troubling, to say the least.
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