Facebook struggles to stop anti-vax conspiracy theories
As a disturbing number of measles outbreaks crop up around the United States, Facebook is facing challenges combating widespread misinformation about vaccinations on its platform, which has become a haven for the anti-vaccination movement.
The World Health Organization recently named “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the biggest global health threats of 2019. But on Facebook, in public pages and private groups with tens of thousands of members, false information about vaccines — largely stemming from a now-debunked 1998 study that tied immunizations to autism — is rampant and tough to pin down. In the bubble of closed groups, users warn against the dangers of vaccinations, citing pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Facebook has publicly declared that fighting misinformation is one of its top priorities. But when it comes to policing misleading content about vaccinations, the site faces a thorny challenge. The bulk of anti-vaccination content doesn’t violate Facebook’s community guidelines for inciting “real-world harm,” according to a spokesperson, and the site’s algorithms often promote unscientific pages or posts about the issue. Parents are left to wade through the mire, and as the viral spread of fake news has shown, many users have trouble distinguishing between reliable sources and unreliable ones.
The rise of “anti-vaxx” Facebook groups is overlapping with a resurgence of measles, a disease that was declared “eliminated” in the U.S. in 2000 because of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. But cases have increased in recent years, and at least 10 states have seen outbreaks this winter. Last month, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency after 35 cases of measles cropped up in a single county, where nearly a quarter of kids attend school without measles, mumps and rubella immunizations. The WHO has named the highly contagious disease a leading cause of death for children.
Although the spread of misinformation about immunizations has potentially fatal repercussions, a Facebook spokesperson said the company doesn’t believe removing such content doesn’t help to increase awareness.
But Facebook’s algorithms often promote anti-vaccination content over widely accepted, scientifically backed posts or pages about vaccinations. A recent investigation from the Guardian found that Facebook search results regarding vaccines were “dominated by anti-vaccination propaganda.” Facebook did not respond to questions from the Guardian about its plans for dealing with the issue.
In addition, a recent study from the Credibility Coalition and Health Feedback, a group of scientists that evaluates the accuracy of health media coverage, found that the majority of the most-clicked health stories on Facebook in 2018 were either fake, or contained a significant amount of misleading information.
The study looked at the top 100 health stories with the most engagements on social media, and had a network of experts assess their credibility. The study found that less than half were “highly credible.” Vaccinations ranked among the three most popular story topics.