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UW study finds Amazon promotes vaccine lies, especially to already misinformed users
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jan/29/uw-study-finds-amazon-promotes-vaccine-lies-especi/By Maggie Quinlan
Excerpt:
Findings from University of Washington researchers’ audit of Amazon algorithms point to a dire situation: The tech giant’s search engine promotes misinformation about vaccines.
. . . Based on their experiments, even if an Amazon shopper started from a blank slate, having never used the site before, search results still ranked books touting misinformation higher than debunking books, according to the study.
But if Amazon shoppers had shown a history of interest in untruthful health products, their search results would yield even more untruthful books about vaccines. Juneja and Mitra call this the “filter-bubble effect.”
“It’s like a rabbit hole,” Juneja said. “You start believing one kind of misinformation and as you engage with that, the algorithm starts recommending more misinformation.”
. . . more at link above
