Two useful articles last week.
First this:
Wading through misinformation: a 2020 problem
Authored by Jane McCredie
A LETTER appeared in mailboxes around my inner-city area last week containing vital new information with the potential to radically alter our approach to public health.
Headed “The Corona Virus is a Scam”, the letter stated germs did not cause disease and viruses did not exist. The unnamed author knew this because they had “worked in an electron microscope unit” where they had “learned to use all the equipment”.
There was only one human disease, the author stated confidently, and that was vitamin deficiency caused by the consumption of junk food. Readers were urged to stop the “medical system dictatorship” by signing petitions against forced vaccinations.
Letterboxing seems very old school in 2020. The real battles happen on social media, and in forums most readers of this publication probably never see.
Also last week, for my sins, I took a dive into the comments on a Channel 9 report of the Prime Minister’s announcement his government had secured access to a possible COVID-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca.
The announcement itself seemed somewhat premature, what with the vaccine not yet having been shown to be either safe or effective, but I guess you can understand the politicians’ desire to share some good news for a change.
Public comments on the Channel 9 report were overwhelmingly negative, with the occasional rational question about possible safety concerns if a vaccine was brought to market too quickly, drowned out by a turbulent mix of conspiracy theories, apocalyptic thinking and straight-out lies.
The vaccine would have computer chips embedded in it to control our minds, all vaccines came from Satan and were against God’s law, Bill Gates had created the virus so he could profit from the vaccine, and so it went.
Commenters frequently urged others to “do their own research” rather than trusting what they were told by authorities. I’m guessing they didn’t mean people should set up their own randomised controlled trials.
There is comedy in all of this, but it’s disturbing too. Such comments may represent fringe views, but they demonstrate how easy it is for any of us to create our own self-confirming realities in the online world.
Researchers from King’s College London conducted three surveys to examine correlations between social media use and belief in various COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
The most recent, conducted in the UK in May, found belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories was astonishingly widespread. Nearly a third of the random sample of more than 2000 people believed the virus had been created in a laboratory, while a similar number believed most people in the UK had probably already had the disease without realising it.
Smaller numbers held more extreme views: more than 12% believed the pandemic was part of a global effort to enforce vaccination, more than 5% that the symptoms ascribed to COVID-19 were really caused by 5-G radiation, and more than 5% that there was no hard evidence the coronavirus existed at all.
Those who used social media platforms as sources of knowledge about the pandemic were significantly more likely to believe the conspiracy theories, particularly the more extreme ones. YouTube had the strongest association with conspiracy beliefs, followed by Facebook.
Those who gained their information from traditional media were less likely to hold such views.
More here:
https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2020/33/wading-through-misinformation-a-2020-problem/
and then this:
Facebook, Twitter must do more to stop anti-vaxxer COVID-19 lies: GPs
John Davidson Columnist
Aug 24, 2020 – 3.00pm
Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook still aren't doing enough to counter the spread of coronavirus-related misinformation and lies on their platforms, and will need to crack down on anti-vaxxers, in particular, should a COVID-19 vaccine become available, one of Australia's peak medical bodies has warned.
Allowing anti-vaccination misinformation to continue to swirl on social media would make it harder for communities to achieve "herd immunity", where sufficient people are immunised against a virus so it can no longer spread through the population, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners said.
"Anti-vaxxer campaigning may result in us not being able to achieve herd immunity. At the best of times herd immunity is difficult to achieve without taking into account the impact of dangerous anti-vaxxer messaging," the GPs warned.
Social media has already been linked to hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospital admissions around the world, as people fall victim to disinformation being spread on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and refuse treatment for COVID-19, or try to treat themselves through drinking bleach or taking bogus remedies.
But the worst might be yet to come, if an effective vaccine should become available and if the US tech companies fail to do something about the anti-vaxxer content they spread.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has provided anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists with a unique opportunity to capitalise on community anxiety and enhance their presence on popular platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter," the RACGP said.
"Anti-vaxxers have been spreading dangerous conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on social media, such as a potential vaccine being a ruse to implant microchips in people, or 5G wireless technology weakening our immune response to the virus."
Facebook says it has already adopted a policy of immediately removing information, such as false claims about COVID-19 cures, that could result in imminent physical harm to its users; and of reducing the distribution of posts such as conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus, that may not cause imminent harm but that may still misinform the public.
"We've been aggressively going after misinformation about COVID-19 since a global public health emergency was declared in January, and we have teams across the company dedicated to this effort," a Facebook spokesperson told The Australian Financial Review.
"From April to June this year, we applied warning labels to 98 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation and removed 7 million pieces of content that could lead to imminent harm, such as content relating to fake preventative measures or exaggerated cures. We've been working to connect people to accurate information and we’re continually fact-checking conspiracies about the virus."
Lots more here:
The articles speak for themselves and highlight the scale and risk of such misinformation. I have to say it really does seem to be more than just an inevitable outcome of the increased use of social media and more like some nefarious effort to undermine our efforts to address the problem sensibly.
It is hard to know who, if anyone, might be behind it.
It is hard not to wonder if the easy acceptance of much of the claptrap may not be related to the fall off in scientific education in the last 20 years and the lack of understanding of just how science and its contribution should be valued.
Additionally I have to say I really find it hard to see a road back from here with Trump and his ‘alternative facts’ and such other insults to the ordinary man’s intelligence.
We sure live in strange and unsettling times.
David.
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