Real doctors need an online ‘verification tick’ to stop spread of quack remedies, MPS told
‘In the area of health, why not create a verification symbol where we can verify medical professionals?’
MEDICAL experts should be given their own verification “tick” on social media to curb “health influencers” pushing fake cancer cures, MPS have been told.
Social media analysts said they had found online figures pushing false treatments to “desperate” cancer sufferers.
MPS on the culture select committee were told that tech companies could do more to combat health misinformation by verifying real doctors and experts to differentiate them from online quacks.
Sites such as Facebook and Twitter already offer a blue tick to prominent users to verify their identity and to differentiate them from parody accounts.
Speaking at the hearing on social media influencers, Dr Stephanie Baker, an expert in health misinformation at City University of London, said: “[In] the area of health, [why] not create a separate verification symbol where we can verify medical professionals? That could be used as a sign of credibility.”
MPS were told that some “influencers”, a term used to describe people with large followings on social media, used “predatory” tactics to spread false health information.
The ploy often involved targeting groups vulnerable to scaremongering, such as minorities who already distrust the Government or new mothers worried about any threat to their babies.
The committee heard some “wellness” influencers would also largely post harmless advice and dietary tips to make later posts about conspiracy theories appear more legitimate.
Dr Baker said such tactics had been successful in promoting anti-vaccine conspiracies during the pandemic, but were also being used for other serious illnesses such as cancer.
She said: “If you go on to Facebook, [you] will find groups entitled ‘the truth about cancer’ and in there find desperate people searching for a cure.
“[They are] saying they are in the final stages of cancer or their loved ones are in the final stages of cancer.
“[I] have taken a screenshot of a member of the disinformation dozen [a list of influencers who spread misinformation] on one of those pages, suggesting that chemotherapy doesn’t work.”
Responding to the evidence, Committee chair MP Julian Knight, said that people selling “quack” cures to people with cancer in the real world would face prosecution and possibly jail.