Facebook Is Still A Cesspool Of Pandemic Hoaxes, And It's Killing People
- Daily Kos, Sept. 28, 2021. - Ed.
Earlier in the year, Media Matters reported on the presence of dozens of Facebook groups promoting the newest hoax cure in the COVID-19 pandemic: ivermectin. Primarily used to fight parasites in livestock animals, ivermectin is popular & relatively safe as a dewormer- but do not under any circumstances give it to some breeds of dogs- with many species-specific formulations. It's also used as a dewormer in humans, if you're unfortunate enough to need it.
What it does not do is cure COVID-19, because a virus is not a worm that burrows into your intestinal lining. Research at one point suggested ivermectin might kill COVID-19 in a petri dish, but that isn't saying much. A cinder block will also kill COVID-19 in a petri dish, if you douse it in gasoline, light a match to it, and throw it with enough force. As of yet, home improvement centers haven't reported a new run on cinder blocks, but give it time. As the pandemic drags on, everything from tanning beds to nebulized ketchup will find momentary purchase as the newest cure. Cinder blocks will have to wait their turn.
A month later, The New York Times has revisited Media Matters' findings to give an update, & the update is what you would expect. Facebook has "taken down a handful of the groups," but the rest continue to thrive. Facebook continues to give the usual public responses, vowing that it's for sure cracking down on this sort of rampant & dangerous misinformation, but the situation remains what it is. Reporters & researchers can easily find groups promoting ivermectin & coaching others how to dose themselves with the livestock versions, can report them to Facebook, & can watch as the company removes a bare handful & ignores the rest.
A not particularly new wrinkle is the effort by anti-vaccine & pro-miracle-cure Facebook group administrators to evade automated FB moderation by encouraging group members to write in code, with intentional misspellings or in-group abbreviations so that the words "vaccine" or "masks" or "ivermectin" do not trigger a FB response. You will note that in its own research, Media Matters was able to find a large number of such posts. It's not possible that FB can't find what outside researchers can so easily find & catalog. It's just not. Then there's the newest Facebook-promoted pandemic hoax, with anti-vaccine advocates warning those that do come down with severe COVID-19 infections not to go to hospitals for treatment, allegedly because hospitals both won't let you get your bleach, ivermectin, or Betadine miracle cures & may try to kill you outright in order to boost pandemic death rates...
- More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/28/2054921/-Facebook-is-still-a-cesspool-of-pandemic-hoaxes-and-it-s-killing-people
- If Zuckerberg & the rest of Facebook's management aren't willing to spend as much time fighting pandemic hoaxes as outside watchdogs regularly spend pointing them out, that is an intentional choice being made.
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