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Vaccine misinformation and Infowars: Researchers wary of Facebook's embrace of 'Groups'


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Vaccine misinformation and Infowars: Researchers wary of Facebook's embrace of 'Groups'

Two years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a renewed focus on communities and its Groups feature, boasting that it would help create a more “meaningful” social infrastructure.

It worked. Last month, Zuckerberg told investors that “hundreds of millions” of users reported belonging in “meaningful groups,” up from one million in 2017, when the company began focusing on Groups.

 

“Connecting with communities of people that you're interested in is going to be as central to the experience as connecting with friends and family,” he told investors last month.

But that shift has also moved Facebook activity out of public view, leaving researchers to warn that they now know less about what is happening on the social network and how the company’s algorithm-driven recommendations are funneling people to fringe communities and misinformation.

“As a researcher, we can get content but content isn’t what you need to research Facebook and see how these groups work,” said Jonathan Albright, director of research at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. “We need to know more about the networks and members of groups that spread false information and target individuals.”

“It would take a lot of work and more of a partnership than Facebook is willing to establish, especially for this kind of work,” Albright said.

Groups gained public attention this week when The Guardian uncovered a vast network of groups spreading false information about vaccines. “STOP Mandatory Vaccination,” one of the largest anti-vaccine private groups at more than 126,000 members, is led by Larry Cook, a self-described “social media activist” with no children or medical training. Cook and his members promote the dispoven theory that vaccines cause autism and spread conspiracies that outbreaks of preventable diseases are “hoaxes” perpetrated by the government.

In response to the negative press, Facebook told Bloomberg News it was considering “reducing or removing this type of content” from the recommendations it offers users.

Those recommendations have also come under increased scrutiny. Part of Facebook’s plan for growth has relied on it’s recommendation engine — the algorithm the company relies on to get users to join more groups.

The algorithm that powers the right rail of “suggested groups” isn’t public, and a Facebook spokesperson declined to give details other than saying they are tailored to individual users. But researchers like Renée DiResta, who studies online disinformation as director of research at cybersecurity company New Knowledge, have found Facebook “actively pushes” users down a rabbit hole of increasingly misinformedconspiratorial and radical communities.

 

Zuckerberg has acknowledged the significance of the recommendation engine, writing in 2017, “Most don't seek out groups on their own — friends send invites or Facebook suggests them.”

Facebook is not the only tech company to face criticism for developing automated recommendations that push users toward misinformation. YouTube recently announced it would be changing its own recommendation engine to stop suggesting conspiracy videos, after years of similar outcry from researchers and former employees critical of what they claimed was the company’s bargain in which it suggested extreme content to keep people watching.

 

 

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infowars..untruth purveyors and propagation of various lies and stupid stuff..that is their motto.

 

problem is the people who frequent that site see it as the only place on earth for true facts, and if you speak against that place you are part of the conspiracy. they claim we never went to the moon, that 911 was a CIA /US government op.sandy hook was too, among other fanciful things such as proof of the flat earth and chem trails just to name a few

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