![]() Last year, Beres began hosting a podcast with friends after they noticed conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and vaccines were swirling on the social media feeds of popular health and wellness influencers.Įarlier this year, when Beres posted a picture of himself receiving the COVID-19 shot, some on social media told him he would likely drop dead in six months’ time. Los Angeles resident Derek Beres, an author and fitness instructor, sees anti-vaccine content thrive in the comments every time he promotes immunizations on his accounts on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. “Our ability to detect (vaccine hesitancy) in comments is bad in English - and basically non-existent elsewhere,” another internal memo posted on March 2 said. The free-for-all was allowing users to swarm vaccine posts from news outlets or humanitarian organizations with negative comments about vaccines. And if they did, Facebook didn’t have a policy in place to take the comments down. “That’s a huge problem and we need to fix it,” the presentation on March 9 read.Įven worse, company employees admitted they didn’t have a handle on catching those comments. But company research in February found that as much as 60% of the comments on vaccine posts were anti-vaccine or vaccine reluctant. And a third of Americans were thinking about skipping the shot entirely, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.ĭespite this, Facebook employees acknowledged they had “no idea” just how bad anti-vaccine sentiment was in the comments sections on Facebook posts. Only 10% of the population had received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. And public health officials were worried. were rolling out vaccines to their most vulnerable - the elderly and sick. Yet the need to act urgently couldn’t have been clearer: At that time, states across the U.S. ![]() The company also said it took time to consider and implement the changes. ![]() Those users also had a 7% decrease in negative interactions on the site. The results were striking: a nearly 12% decrease in content that made claims debunked by fact-checkers and an 8% increase in content from authoritative public health organizations such as the WHO or U.S. Instead of seeing posts about vaccines that were chosen based on their popularity, these users saw posts selected for their trustworthiness. To study ways to reduce vaccine misinformation, Facebook researchers changed how posts are ranked for more than 6,000 users in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. But Facebook’s own documents show that when it comes to divisive public health issues like vaccines, engagement-based ranking only emphasizes polarization, disagreement, and doubt. That ranking scheme may work well for innocuous subjects like recipes, dog photos, or the latest viral singalong. Typically, Facebook ranks posts by engagement - the total number of likes, dislikes, comments, and reshares. “These people are selling fear and outrage,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook who is now a vocal critic. The Wall Street Journal reported on some of Facebook’s efforts to deal with anti-vaccine comments last month.įacebook’s response raises questions about whether the company prioritized controversy and division over the health of its users. They also reveal rank-and-file employees regularly suggested solutions for countering anti-vaccine content on the site, to no avail. The trove of documents shows that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook carefully investigated how its platforms spread misinformation about life-saving vaccines. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press. ![]() In an emailed statement, Facebook said it has made “considerable progress” this year with downgrading vaccine misinformation in users’ feeds.įacebook’s internal discussions were revealed in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. “It drives attention and attention equals eyeballs and eyeballs equal ad revenue.” “Why would you not remove comments? Because engagement is the only thing that matters,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an internet watchdog group. When another Facebook researcher suggested disabling comments on vaccine posts in March until the platform could do a better job of tackling anti-vaccine messages lurking in them, that proposal was ignored.Ĭritics say the reason Facebook was slow to take action on the ideas is simple: The tech giant worried it might impact the company’s profits. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor
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