As pressure mounts on Facebook to justify its role in promoting anti-vaccine misinformation,Pinterest tries different approachOn Wednesday morning, Adam Schiff, and the powerful chair of the House intelligence committee,joined journalists around the world in a nascent Twitter meme: he searched “vaccine” on Facebook and posted a screenshot of the results.
Schiff’s search results were indeed alarming: autofill suggestions for phrases such as “vaccination re-education discussion forum”, a group called “Parents Against Vaccination”, and the page for the National Vaccine Information middle,an official-sounding organization that promotes anti-vaccine propaganda. And while search results on Facebook are personalized to each user, a recent Guardian report found similarly biased results for a brand new account.
Last week, or I wrote to Facebook and Google to express my concern that their sites are steering users to bad information that discourages vaccinations,undermining public health.
The search results you glean for “vaccines” on Facebook are a dramatic illustration. pic.twitter.com/ZrEQfVTaRo Related: 'He's learned nothing': Zuckerberg floats crowdsourcing Facebook fact-checks Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com