Inside STAT: Facebook’s vaccine misinformation problem faces a new test with Covid-19

(ADOBE)

Researchers and advocates are sounding the alarm over what they see as a looming threat: Facebook’s apparent inability to police dangerous falsehoods about vaccines. Since the outset of the pandemic, vaccine-related falsehoods have ballooned on the platform. Facebook’s piecemeal approaches are too little too late while the stakes are only getting higher, critics tell STAT’s Erin Brodwin. “Covid-19 misinformation is the equivalent of an ideological dirty bomb: It has the capacity to hurt tens of thousands of people when it detonates in the moment that vaccines are available,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and chief executive officer of the U.K.-based nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Read more here.