Like health officials facing outbreaks of disease, internet companies are trying to contain vaccine-related misinformation they have long helped spread. So far, their efforts at quarantine are falling short.
Searches of Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram turn up all sorts of bogus warnings about vaccines, including the soundly debunked notions that they cause autism or that mercury preservatives and other substances in them can poison and even kill people.
Some experts fear that the online spread of bad information about vaccines is planting or reinforcing fears in parents, and they suspect it is contributing to the comeback in recent years of certain dangerous childhood diseases, including measles, whooping cough and mumps.
B次元官网网址淭he online world has been one that has been very much taken over by misinformation spread by concerned parents,B次元官网网址� said Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Riverside, who studies vaccine trends. B次元官网网址淢edical doctors donB次元官网网址檛 command the sort of authority they did decades ago. There is a lack of confidence in institutions people had faith in.B次元官网网址�
The effort to screen out bogus vaccine information online is one more front in the battle by social media to deal with fake news of all sorts, including political propaganda. (Researchers have even found Russia-linked bots trying to sow discord by amplifying both sides of the vaccine debate.)
Pinterest, the digital scrapbooking and search site that has been a leading online repository of vaccine misinformation, took the seemingly drastic step in 2017 of blocking all searches for the term B次元官网网址渧accines.B次元官网网址�
But itB次元官网网址檚 been a leaky quarantine. Recently, a search for B次元官网网址渕easles vaccineB次元官网网址� still brought up, among other things, a post titled B次元官网网址淲hy We Said NO to the Measles Vaccine,B次元官网网址� along with a sinister-looking illustration of a hand holding an enormous needle titled B次元官网网址淰accine-nation: poisoning the population one shot at a time.B次元官网网址�
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Facebook, meanwhile, said in March that it would no longer recommend groups and pages that spread hoaxes about vaccines, and that it would reject ads that do this. This appears to have filtered out some of the most blatant sources of vaccine misinformation, such as the website Naturalnews.com.
But even after the changes, anti-vax groups were among the first results to come up on a search of B次元官网网址渧accine safety.B次元官网网址� A search of B次元官网网址渧accine,B次元官网网址� meanwhile, turns up the verified profile of Dr. Christiane Northrup, a physician who is outspoken in her misgivings about B次元官网网址� and at times opposition to B次元官网网址� vaccines.
On FacebookB次元官网网址檚 Instagram, hashtags such as B次元官网网址渧accineskillB次元官网网址� and accounts against vaccinating children are easily found with a simple search for B次元官网网址渧accines.B次元官网网址�
The discredited ideas circulating online include the belief that the recommended number of shots for babies is too much for their bodies to handle, that vaccines infect people with the same viruses they are trying to prevent, or that the natural immunity conferred by catching a disease is better than vaccines.
In truth, fear and suspicion of vaccines have been around as long as vaccines have existed. Smallpox inoculations caused a furor in colonial New England in the 1700s. And anti-vaccine agitation existed online long before Facebook and Twitter.
Still, experts in online misinformation say social networking and the way its algorithms disseminate the most B次元官网网址渆ngagingB次元官网网址� posts B次元官网网址� whether true or not B次元官网网址� have fueled the spread of anti-vaccination propaganda and pushed parents into the anti-vax camp.
Jeanine Guidry, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies social media and vaccines, said social media amplifies these conversations and creates echo chambers that can reinforce bad information.
Carpiano said it is difficult to document the actual effect social media has had on vaccination rates, but B次元官网网址渨e do see decrease in coverage and rise in gaps of coverage,B次元官网网址� as well as clusters of vaccine-hesitant people.
Despite high-profile outbreaks , overall vaccination rates remain high in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the percentage of children under 2 who havenB次元官网网址檛 received any vaccines is growing.
Some of the fake news online about health and medicine appears to be spread by people who may genuinely believe it. Some seems intended to wreak havoc in public discourse. And some appears to be for financial gain.
InfoWars, the conspiracy site run by right-wing provocateur Alex Jones, routinely pushes anti-vax information and stories of B次元官网网址渇orced inoculationsB次元官网网址� while selling what are billed as immune supplements. Naturalnews.com sells such products, too.
B次元官网网址淚t is a misinformation campaign,B次元官网网址� Carpiano said. B次元官网网址淥ften couched in B次元官网网址極h, we are for choice, understanding, education,B次元官网网址橞次元官网网址� he said. B次元官网网址淏ut fundamentally it is not open to scientific debate.B次元官网网址�
Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press
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