Social media giants are finding it hard to quarantine fake news.
The outbreak of the new coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, with all the misinformation and conspiracy that has followed it, has put the major social media companies to the test as they try to combat panic and paranoia.
The big U.S. companies have moved quickly to try to quell criticism that their platforms are turning into cesspools of bad information and fear. So have their Chinese counterparts—which are also under considerable government pressure as Beijing faces its worst legitimacy crisis in years. As the virus has spread, their platforms have played host to theories that the deadly virus is a lab-made bioweapon and that the streets of Wuhan are littered with thousands of dead bodies.
Some are responding better than others.
Twitter has been a significant vector for misinformation around the virus, but the company has taken steps to actually put reliable medical information in the hands of users. Anyone searching for “coronavirus” or “Wuhan” on Twitter will be met with a message encouraging them to “know the facts,” with a link to a local health authority, and the platform is prioritizing countries’ health authorities in the search results.
Twitter has also moved to ban certain accounts spreading conspiracy theories—most prominently the long-running conspiracist site ZeroHedge. Twitter said in a statement that there was no evidence of coordinated efforts to spread disinformation on the platform but added: “[W]e will remain vigilant and have invested significantly in our proactive abilities to ensure trends, search, and other common areas of the service are protected from malicious behaviours.”
Google has taken a similar approach. Users using the search giant to look up information on the virus receive information from the World Health Organization, including details on how the virus is transmitted, as well as sensible precautions people can take, such as hand-washing tips. Google is generally cagey about how and when it removes or deprioritizes search results from its service, but searches for various coronavirus conspiracy theories turn up news agencies debunking those claims ahead of unreliable sites like Infowars and ZeroHedge.
On Reddit, where several communities dedicated solely to the coronavirus have popped up, there have been mixed results. The two largest virus-related subreddits, with about 50,000 users apiece, both have official rules asking users to use reliable information and to avoid sensationalism.
- Foreign Policy
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