Anti-Vaxxer Lies Still Rampant on Social Media

We all know how hard a time killer Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg has looking out for people. While he’s busy tagging along with Republican A.G.s shouting about a dead pipeline, he’s ignoring a call by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and eleven other A.G.s to Facebook and Twitter to clamp down on false information about coronavirus vaccines:

“Misinformation disseminated via your platforms has increased vaccine hesitancy, which will slow economic recovery and, more importantly, ultimately cause even more unnecessary deaths,” the group of attorneys general state in the letter. The letter sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Wednesday is signed by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia.

They note that purveyors of vaccine misinformation have often targeted Black Americans, “members of communities who have suffered the worst health impacts of the virus and whose vaccination rates are lagging” [Shannon Vavra, “State Prosecutors Push Facebook, Twitter to Do More to Slow Virus Misinformation,” CyberScoop, 2021.03.25].

Twitter and Facebook say they are already taking reasonable steps to counter liars who threaten public health:

A spokesperson for Twitter noted that the platform has removed over 20,000 posts from the platform and challenged nearly 12 million accounts under its coronavirus misinformation policy.

“We will not take action on every instance of misinformation. In order for content related to COVID-19 to be labeled or removed under this policy, it must: advance a claim of fact, expressed in definitive terms; be demonstrably false or misleading, based on widely available, authoritative sources; and be likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm,” they explained.

Facebook spokesperson Kevin McAlister told The Hill that the platform has “already taken action against some of the groups in this report.”

“Since research shows that the best way to combat vaccine hesitancy is to connect people to reliable information from health experts, we’ve also connected over 2 billion people to resources from health authorities, including through our COVID-19 Information Center,” he added [Anagha Srikanth, “12 Prominent People Opposed to Vaccines Are Responsible for Two-Thirds of Anti-Vaccine Content Online: Report,” The Hill, 2021.03.24].

Despite those efforts, Attorney General Ellison and his colleagues note that liars are still flooding our online mindspace with lies that prolong the pandemic and costs lives and GDP. The A.G.s cite a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that contends that socialmedia platforms “fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them.”  twelve anti-vaxxers—the “Disinformation Dozen“—are responsible for 65% of the anti-vaccine propaganda plaguing social media in general and 73% of the anti-vaxxer lies posted to Facebook from February 1 through March 16. The CCDH calls on Facebook and Twitter to boot those twelve liars and organizations that help spread their lies:

The most effective and efficient way to stop the dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible repeat offenders, who we term the Disinformation Dozen. This should also include the organisations these individuals control or fund, as well as any backup accounts they have established to evade removal.

1. Joseph Mercola
2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
4. Sherri Tenpenny
5. Rizza Islam
6. Rashid Buttar
7. Erin Elizabeth
8. Sayer Ji
9. Kelly Brogan
10. Christiane Northrup
11. BenTapper
12. Kevin Jenkins

Deplatform key anti-vaxxer organisations

In addition to deplatforming the personal accounts of the Disinformation Dozen, platforms must also acknowledge the real-world networks they use to spread their anti- vaccine messages. This means deplatforming key organisations that are linked to the Disinformation Dozen or simply help spread their messages.

• Children’s Health Defense (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
• Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) (Del Bigtree)
• National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (Barbara Loe Fisher, Joseph Mercola)
• Organic Consumers Association (OCA) (Joseph Mercola)
• Millions Against Medical Mandates [Center for Countering Digital Hate, “The Disinformation Dozen: Why Platforms Must Act on Twelve Leading Online Anti-Vaxxers,” March 2021].

The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google testified to House Commerce and Energy Thursday about what more they can do to fight false information on their websites. Congressman Peter Welch (D-VT) suggested a new federal agency to regulate social media, and the CEOs, sensing the mounting pressure against them from all sides on Capitol Hill, didn’t immediately say No way. Twitter chief Jack Doresey, however, noted his own aversion to taking responsibility for truth, saying, “I don’t think we should be the arbiters of truth and I don’t think the government should be either.”

But hey, Dorsey likes fake money, too, so defending truth is up to all the rest of us. While we wait for social media companies to put truth above eyeballs and profits, the CCDH reminds us we all can do our part to fight malarkey: