Like the War on Terror or the War on Poverty, there are also Fights to be Fought and the Fight against Online Misinformation is one of the most pressing because there is a lot of it about, originating from those crazies who dare to question the official narrative. Figure 1 shows a character from a board game titled "Sentinels of the Multiverse: Miss Information Villain Character (2013)". Appropriately, for the purposes of this blog post, the character is a "villain" disguised as a "demure office worker". This play on words was prompted by a BBC news article, the content of which I've included in full:
Pinterest to direct vaccine searches to health sites
Pinterest users searching for vaccine-related information will be directed to results from "public health organisations". Last year, the social platform stopped showing results for vaccine searches to tackle the spread of misinformation. Social media companies are facing increasing scrutiny over how they moderate content on their sites. In recent months, other firms including Facebook have taken some steps to address vaccine misinformation.
Under the new policy, Pinterest said searches for "measles," "vaccine safety" and other related health terms will return results from public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net. "We're taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn't responsible," the firm said in a statement. "As we continue to tackle health misinformation, we remove it and the accounts that spread it from our service," Pinterest said. The firm also said it won't show ads, comments or recommendations on results pages for vaccine searches.
How anti-vaccine movements threaten global health
Content crackdown
The WHO said anti-vaccine views were a "top 10 global health threat" in 2019.The volume of anti-vaccine sentiment on social media has risen in recent years, sparking concern that it is having a negative impact on immunisation rates in some countries. In recent months, some platforms have taken steps to counter false information about vaccines.
The move in February followed protests from companies who discovered their adverts were running alongside the controversial videos.
In a statement in March, Facebook said it was working to "tackle vaccine misinformation… by reducing its distribution and providing people with authoritative information on the topic". The company said measures to be taken included rejecting ads with misinformation about vaccines and not showing misleading content on hashtag pages. Instagram - which is owned by Facebook - said in May it would block hashtags being used to spread "verifiably false" information about vaccinations.
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| Figure 1: Source |
Ultimately, companies hosting websites that contain alleged misinformation will be forced to shut these sites down but for the moment that is not the case. In the meantime, as mainstream social media sites continue to further restrict access to alternative information, one approach is to direct visitors to alternative news websites. This could take the form of a single URL leading to a web location containing links to multiple alternative news sites.
The caption could read:
INFORMATION, DISINFORMATION OR MISINFORMATION?
YOU SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO DECIDE.
YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, PINTEREST ETC.
SHOULDN'T DECIDE FOR YOU.
CLICK BELOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS
ABOUT WHAT THESE SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE
It's harder for algorithms to detect and delete such "misinformation capsules" (for want of a better term) that could be scattered all over the Internet. There will always be people who object to having their information filtered but who lack time to search for the unfiltered variety. Perhaps the misinformation capsule will be the red pill that sets them free.
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