Radiologists among hundreds of docs urging Facebook to disclose data on COVID vaccine disinformation
Radiologists are among hundreds of physicians urging Facebook to disclose data about disinformation campaigns on the social media site, aimed at sowing doubt about COVID-19 vaccinations.
Whistleblower Sophie Zhang recently brought some of these concerns to light, with internal memos revealing that even authoritative sources on Facebook were becoming “cesspools of anti-vaccine comments.” Over the summer, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy urged platforms such as Facebook to operate transparently and reveal data on the depths of disinformation. In a Nov. 4 letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, physicians echoed Murthy’s call for transparency and the release details on such campaigns.
“As public health leaders who recommend policies grounded in the principles of evidentiary science, we implore Facebook to responsibly disclose this data,” wrote Howard Forman, MD, MBA, a Yale University professor of radiology, Santa Fe Imaging’s Thomas Burdick, MD, and numerous others. “Share what you know about COVID-19 disinformation with independent public health researchers so they can study it, evaluate its impact, and recommend solutions to the company and the public health community.”
In supporting their claims, the letter writers cited recent studies concluding that Facebook continues to recommend pages promoting disinformation. One analysis estimated that the number of groups sharing falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines has doubled since April, while “prominent anti-vaxxers” continue to use the site.
“This deception must end now,” the authors stated. “So many deaths could have been prevented, and we must act with haste to prevent more, particularly with vaccines becoming imminently available for young children. We simply cannot afford another deadly round of covid and vaccine misinformation.”
The letter was initially shared exclusively with USA Today and posted to Doctors for America’s website—a group working to put “patients over politics” to address pressing health issues. In a statement to the news service, a Facebook spokesperson claimed vaccine hesitancy among its users has declined by 50% since January. The platform has also removed “more than 20 million” pieces of content that violate its COVID-related policies, banned thousands, and connected 2 billion users to reliable health info.
“Tracking and sharing data on the prevalence of misinformation is difficult for any subject, but especially for COVID-19 where the facts and guidance about the pandemic are updated over time. This is why no major tech company releases this data," the Meta (Facebook’s new corporate name) spokesperson said.
Read more from USA Today below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.