Massive Facebook study on users' doubt in vaccines finds a small group appears to play a big role in

[demmiblue]

Massive Facebook study on users’ doubt in vaccines finds a small group appears to play a big role in pushing the skepticism

Facebook is conducting a vast behind-the-scenes study of doubts expressed by U.S. users about vaccines, a major project that attempts to probe and teach software to identify the medical attitudes of millions of Americans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The research is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy, or the act of delaying or refusing a vaccination despite its availability, on social media — a primary source of health information for millions of people. It shows how the company is probing ever more nuanced realms of speech, and illustrates how weighing free speech vs. potential for harm is more tenuous than ever for technology companies during a public health crisis.

While Facebook has banned outright false and misleading statements about coronavirus vaccines since December, a huge realm of expression about vaccines sits in a gray area. One example could be comments by someone expressing concern about side effects that are more severe than expected. Those comments could be both important for fostering meaningful conversation and potentially bubbling up unknown information to health authorities — but at the same time they may contribute to vaccine hesitancy by playing upon people’s fears.

The research explores how to address that tension by studying these types of comments, which are tagged “VH” by the company’s software algorithms, as well as the nature of the communities that spread them, according to the documents. Its early findings suggest that a large amount of content that does not break the rules may be causing harm in certain communities, where it has an echo chamber effect.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/14/facebook-vaccine-hesistancy-qanon/

I wonder how many times "my body, my choice" is mentioned from "just asking a question" types. Thank goodness DU smacks that shite down hard.

[TwilightZone]

1. Same thing with Q-Anon.

It's a small group propped up by a lot of cash. Meanwhile, approval ratings of the "group" nationally are in the single digits.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/07/politics/qanon-americans-analysis/index.html