Zuckerberg Regrets Censoring Covid Content, But Disinformation Threatens Public Health, Not Free Speech

In a letter this week to Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that his teams “put under pressure” by the Biden White House to censor certain content about Covid-19. In response, the White House released the following statement: “Faced with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Our position was clear and consistent: we believe that technology companies and other private actors should consider the impacts their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present.”

The growing threat of disinformation

On the fourth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, I posted a commentary identifying disinformation as the greatest threat to American health. In contrast to disinformation: sharing false claims without intention mislead – disinformation does purposefully planted and distributed to achieve economic, political or strategic goals. The pandemic has amplified both problems.

In the spring of 2020, just two months after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University discovered reported that more than 80% of the top 50 influential retweeters of coronavirus posts were bots. Wikipedia defines an Internet bot as a software application designed to “perform automated tasks (scripts) on the Internet, usually with the intention of imitating human activities such as messaging on a large scale.” It is likely that many of the bots identified by CMU were made in Russia or China.

The following year, at about the same time that Mr. Zuckerberg reports that he is “under pressure” from the Biden White House, the nonpartisan RAND Corporation released a report. report titled: “Curbing COVID-19 Misinformation from China, Russia and Elsewhere.”

Two paragraphs are instructive:

“Our key finding was that both Russia and China promoted dangerous conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that were likely to have a negative impact on global public health, which we believe constitutes serious misconduct. These conspiracy narratives include the idea that contact tracing was a sinister plot for governments to track their citizens and establish a totalitarian state; that unproven drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were effective for treating COVID-19 but were withheld from the public by a Big Pharma cabal; and that the danger of COVID-19 was vastly exaggerated by the media and medical establishment.

“It doesn’t matter that these conspiracy theories contradict themselves: COVID-19, if you were to believe all these stories at the same time, is no worse than a mild cold, but also a deadly bioweapon developed by the US government. Never mind that both Russia and China themselves have experienced significant death tolls and economic fallout from the virus, which has been prolonged by their own citizens’ distrust of the medical establishment. The governments of Russia and China have put their geopolitical interests ahead of the public health, safety and lives of innocent citizens around the world.”

Misinformation increased the number of pandemic-related deaths

To date, COVID-19 has claimed more than 1.1 million American lives, a substantial portion of the 7 million confirmed deaths worldwide. The actual toll may be higher; based on various analyzes of excess mortality in the US and worldwide. Almost in June 2021 240,000 American dead This could have been prevented if more Americans had accepted the primary series vaccination, according to a study by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF. Unfortunately, tens of millions refused because they were convinced to distrust government scientists and even the advice of their own doctors and nurses.

Because the algorithms that power social media are designed to target, segment, and amplify users’ opinions to generate more “clicks,” they provide fertile ground for those seeking to distort public opinion. Disinformation – the more provocative, the better – thrives in such an environment. That’s why lies spread faster than the truth on the internet.

The politicization of disinformation

Disinformation is increasingly intertwined with politics. Under the guise of “defending medical freedom,” nationally respected biomedical and public health scientists such as Anthony Fauci, Peter Hotez, and Paul Offit were demonized online, threatened and publicly attacked by elected officials.

Zuckerberg’s complaint that he was pressured to “censor” Facebook content likely strikes many federal scientists as ironic. In previous disease outbreaks, they were often asked to provide objective information to the public. However, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many were sidelined and silenced while President Trump tried to downplay the threat. The board intervened on their behalf Dr. Scott Atlas and others who held views more aligned with those of the president.

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to study the problem. The Washingtonpost reports that below political pressure from Rep. Jordan and other ultraconservatives in Congress: “Academics, universities, and government agencies are reviewing or ending research programs designed to combat the spread of online disinformation.”

Through the looking glass

In 1983, the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan alleged in a Washingtonpost in the op-ed: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” A lot has changed since then. In a 2020 appearance on NBC’s Meet the pressTrump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway tried to explain away false claims about the size of President Trump’s inaugural crowd by describing them as “alternative facts.”

Today, in a parallel universe full of alternative facts, “natural” infections are safer than vaccines, fluoridated water and wind turbines are harmful to health, antidepressants are linked to school shootings, and climate change is a hoax. All these beliefs, and many more, are fueled by misinformation.

By publicly expressing his regret for taking modest steps to rein in misinformation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—the deadliest public health challenge our country has faced in a century—Mr. Zuckerberg has made it clear to Representative Jordan and his allies in Congress, as well as purveyors of disinformation around the world, that Facebook — a social media giant with more than 2 billion daily users — is open for business.