Post by jinathjemi22222 on Feb 25, 2024 0:26:12 GMT -5
In this way, the top 10 websites identified by Avaaz as spreaders of health misinformation had almost 4 times more visits on Facebook than official sites , such as the World Health Organization (WHO), according to the report. Public pages are also not exempt from fake news, especially in the United States, where 42 of these sites shared fake news to more than 28 million people . Read more: Pandemic-proof fortunes: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have increased their wealth by 100 billion so far this year Among all the hoaxes spread by the social network, the content highlighted by the organization includes: 8.4 million views on an article claiming Bill Gates supported a polio vaccine that paralyzed half a million children in India. 4.5 million views for an article containing fake cures for deadly diseases , such as colloidal silver to treat Ebola. 2.4 million views for an article stating that quarantines and confinement measures are harmful to public health.
Avaaz campaign director Fadi Quran has clearly stated that " Facebook's algorithm is a major threat to public health [even though] Mark Zuckerberg promised to provide reliable information during the pandemic." "Despite this, its algorithm is sabotaging those efforts by leading many of Facebook's 2.7 billion users into networks spreading health misinformation. This infodemic will have serious C Level Contact List effects on the pandemic unless Facebook detoxifies its algorithm and provides corrections. to all those exposed to these viral lies ," Quran emphasizes. The mechanisms of misinformation A group of Donald Trump followers wearing t-shirts alluding to fake news In addition to the obvious intention to put an end to fake news, or at least hide it, one of Avaaz's biggest claims is that the social network provides proven and independent corrections to all users who have been victims of misinformation .
This pandemic should be a powerful reminder of how successful vaccines have been, but instead anti-vaccines are using Facebook to spread toxic lies and conspiracy theories ," laments Frank Ulrich Montgomery, president of the World Medical Association (WMA). ), in statements to the BBC . In this regard, Facebook's defense insists that the social network is doing everything it can to combat health myths that play against the coronavirus and put forward a star argument: if you put the word "vaccines" in its search box, the The first information that appears is always verified and reliable . Read more: The American extreme right attacks Bill Gates and accuses him of creating the coronavirus to control global health This reasoning, however, has a trick, since the most common dissemination of news on Facebook is not from a direct search —no one searches for "vaccine" in the social network's search box; In any case, they do it on Google—but on the timeline of each user and the walls of their friends , which are conditioned by the infamous algorithm. An example of this is the page "Kate Shemirani", a personal site in which its administrator calls herself "Natural Nurse in a Toxic World" .