With the current state of the world as it is due to the outbreak of COVID-19, fear is everywhere. This fear is being preyed on by price gougers and those publishing misinformation about the spread and treatment of the disease.
Luckily for us, major social media networks have been campaigning at full force against the spread of misinformation. They are listening to fact-checking sites when they flag something, removing information about "cures" which actually equate to poison, and giving free ad space to messages from the CDC. Despite these tactics, misinformation is still out there. But companies like Google and Facebook are still actively working to combat this with the development of new algorithms and techniques to filter their content.
While this is quite the wonderful development and shows a world standing together against this pandemic, it also highlights the fact that these tactics could have been implemented much sooner. For years groups like Facebook have been in the spotlight for allowing political misinformation to run rampant on their sites. This has always been explained as a problem of free speech, or just being something the algorithms cannot protect against. But here we clearly see them doing the supposedly impossible in actively flagging misinformation and removing it. We can only hope their hypocrisy doesn't grow once this is over, and that they will choose to apply this technology to other forms of misinformation.
Link to Article
Hi Ashley!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about this concept the other day. It makes you wonder how much can be done before something really big happens, like a pandemic. Unfortunately, we don't work within the systems, so we can't say what was or wasn't set in place before an event happens. For example: Can the government do more to help an impoverished class before a pandemic occurs, while it occurs, and afterwards?
While it's interesting to think about it, it's not productive to constantly speculate. From what I'm seeing, it seems that grace and mercy are winning over a wide-spread panic. Hopefully, we will continue to think about one another and try to protect one another, pandemic or not.
Best,
Kourtney
I'm glad to see that some of the more virulent rumors are being combated by giving space to credible sources, like the CDC. With all of the wild homeopathic treatments that have circulated in the anti-vax community, it has been well-established that fear can drive people to believe anything.
ReplyDeleteI have run into issues with less dangerous viral lies. I've seen a lot of people claiming that these few weeks indoors have reversed the decades of pollution we've created on the planet. These posts are usually accompanied by moral disdain and guilt-tripping readers for not cleaning their acts up sooner. Unfortunately, many of the "signs" that the ecosystem is becoming friendlier are actually just natural indicators of lowered human activity. I believe this kind of internet shaming is harmful for different reasons than the ones you mentioned. It detracts from the seriousness and the permanence of the damage we have caused and only serves to lower morale. I have been trying to debate this misinformation when I see it, but a top-down approach is really the only way we can address these problems.
-Bennett