According to a document obtained by the Washington Post, Facebook is conducting a large-scale behind-the-scenes investigation of the allegations expressed by US users about the vaccine. This is a major project that seeks to research and teach software and identify the medical attitudes of millions of Americans.
The study spread ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitation, or delays or rejects vaccines despite the availability of vaccines, on social media, the leading source of health information for millions of people. It is a large-scale attempt to understand the act of doing things. This shows that companies are exploring more subtle areas of speech than ever before, and it is more than ever for tech companies to weigh freedom of speech and potential harm. Shows that it is sparse.
Facebook has banned false and misleading statements about the coronavirus vaccine since December, but there is a vast area of ​​wording about the vaccine in the gray area. One example is the comment of someone who has expressed concern about side effects that are more serious than expected. These comments can be important because they can facilitate meaningful conversations and infuse health authorities with unknown information, but at the same time contribute to vaccine hesitation by taking advantage of people’s fears. There is likely to be.
This study explores how to address that tension by investigating these types of comments tagged as “VH” by the company’s software algorithms and the nature of the community that spreads them. Its early findings suggest that a large amount of content that does not violate the rules may be harmful to some communities with echo chamber effects.
The company’s data scientists divided the company’s US users, groups, and pages into 638 different population segments to investigate which types of groups have a belief in vaccine repellent. The document does not specify how Facebook defined the segment or grouped different communities, but states that the segment can be at least 3 million people.
Some of the early findings are noteworthy. Ten of the 638 population segments contained 50% of all vaccine repellent content on the platform. In addition, in the population segment with the highest number of vaccine repellents, 111 users provided half of the vaccine repellent content.
Facebook can use the findings to inform policy discussions on addressing problematic content, or to direct more credible information to specific groups, but the company is still a solution. Is under development, said spokeswoman Dani Lever.
According to the document, research efforts are also significant between a community skeptical of vaccines and a community associated with QAnon, a vast set of unfounded claims associated with violent crimes that have radicalized followers. I found early evidence of duplication.
Facebook has partnered with more than 60 health professionals around the world, Lever said in an email. And it regularly researches a wide variety of content to inform it of its policy.
“Public health experts have revealed that vaccination efforts are a top priority for COVID response, so we have already linked 2 billion people to reliable information from health professionals and made mistakes about COVID. We have launched a global campaign to eliminate the allegations, “the vaccine, she said. “This work in progress helps inform us of our efforts.”
Nearly 30% of Americans and half of Republicans say they don’t intend to get one of three federally approved vaccines, according to a March poll by PBS NewsHour, Marist, and NPR. I am. According to an Associated Press / NORC survey conducted in late January, the main reasons for concern about vaccination were fear of side effects, distrust of the vaccine, and the desire to wait and get vaccinated later.
False information related to Covid-19 is flooding the company’s platform, including false stories about diseases that can be caused by the new coronavirus, which are less deadly than the flu. This is somehow related to the philanthropic building’s population control program. Gates and its vaccine are associated with the Antichrist. Its content decisions, its potential anti-competitive behavior, and its use by radical groups to foster violence have attracted the attention of regulators and of parliamentary hearings and major antitrust laws by the Department of Justice. It led to the accusation.
Facebook, which owns WhatsApp messenger and Instagram, collects a large amount of data about more than 3.3 billion users worldwide and has extensive access to those users’ devices. According to public health experts, the company is in a unique position to investigate attitudes towards behaviors such as vaccines and tests and to inform people.
But when Facebook’s research efforts prove to be useful to the general public, the company’s history of misusing people’s data goes a steep uphill. The company allowed political research firms to abuse the profiles of tens of millions of Americans, caused a privacy scandal for Cambridge Analytica, and once manipulated people’s emotions for internal investigations.
Since April, social networks have publicly partnered with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to conduct a COVID-19 symptom study. This is a daily survey of Facebook users asking people about their symptoms, tests, mental health, attitudes towards masks, and vaccination intentions. .. Related projects use smartphone data to track whether people are following social distance commands and blockades. At least 16 million people have been surveyed, and researchers say it is one of the largest public health data collection efforts during a pandemic.
Facebook also bans a wide range of unfounded or misleading claims about vaccines and viruses, removes over 12 million content, and uses post labels and banners at the top of Facebook sites to trust. It connects people to the information they can. the company.
The company should be very careful if it decides to further monitor vaccine evasion, as much of the content in Facebook’s vaccine hesitarian survey is about expressing concerns and doubts and complete false alarms.
“Vaccine conversations are so subtle that we can’t always clearly separate content into useful and harmful,” Facebook Health Officer Kang-Xing Jin said last week in San Francisco. I wrote in the Chronicle opinion article. “It’s hard to draw a line in a post that includes people’s personal experiences with vaccines.”
But according to the document, Facebook is worried about content that doesn’t completely break that rule. “The investigation is very early, but we are concerned that non-violating content can be very harmful,” the document said.
Facebook engineers have found that the risk of harm seems to be disproportionately affecting some communities.
The results of Facebook’s early research tracks and the small number of people, especially influencers and those who post frequently or spread messages using unwieldy tactics, have a big impact on conversations and superspreaders. There are findings from disinformation researchers who have pointed out that they may function as. Of misleading information.
Researchers can overcome some of the comments hesitating about vaccines when posted to communities with different opinions, but the concentration of such comments in small groups means that people are simply people. He said it suggests that it is an echo chamber that reinforces the existing ideas of.
In the segment affiliated with QAnon, the study found widespread vaccine skepticism. “QAnon may have a causal link to vaccine repellent,” the document states. In the QAnon community, skepticism about vaccines was associated with distrust of the elite and institutions.
Last year, outside researchers discovered that Facebook’s QAnon group was influencing the spread of falsely-filled documentaries on social platforms called “Plandemic.”
According to Facebook’s internal research, comments that could contribute to vaccine hesitation overlap with QAnon and go far beyond that to many other different types of communities. The QAnon group seemed to focus on the possibility of distrust of authority as a reason for suspicion of vaccines, while other groups expressed suspicions and concerns differently. This finding suggests that public health professionals need to create subtle messages when trying to address vaccine hesitation in the population.
