Health
Marketplace flagged over 800 social media posts with COVID-19 misinformation. Only a fraction were removed – CBC.ca
The world’s social media giants promised to crack down on harmful COVID-19 misinformation that has proliferated since the pandemic began, but a CBC Marketplace investigation found that when problematic posts were flagged, most weren’t labelled or removed.
Marketplace producers, between Feb. 3 and Feb. 16, combed through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter — using the user tool to flag and report more than 800 posts that breach each company’s policies that cover, among other things, posting misinformation.
The result: 12 per cent of the posts were labelled with warnings or taken down entirely. That number jumped to 53 per cent per cent only after Marketplace journalists identified themselves and shared the findings directly with the companies.
WATCH | Full Marketplace report on COVID-19 misinformation:
Inside one of the world’s most dangerous Covid-19 conspiracy movements; Canada’s food labels fail to disclose added sugar content which makes some packaged foods appear healthier than they are. 22:30
“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram have become the primary superspreaders of misinformation in our world,” said Imran Ahmed, founder of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit based out of Washington, D.C., which Marketplace collaborated with on this project. “That is a shocking failure to act on misinformation that was handed to them on a silver platter.”
Of the 832 posts Marketplace flagged, 391 came from Facebook, 166 from Instagram, 173 from Twitter and 102 from YouTube. The posts had a combined 1.5 million likes and 120,000 comments and covered a range of COVID-19-related topics, but generally circled back to a few central themes: vaccines are dangerous, COVID-19 isn’t and don’t trust authorities.
Partly fuelled by social media, partly fuelled by the COVID-19 conspiracy movement’s effective persuasion tactics, misinformation has contributed to anti-lockdown sentiment, COVID-19 denial and vaccine hesitancy, said Ahmed.
Ahmed says companies such as Facebook are motivated to keep users sharing more content, not less. The more you scroll and the more users consume, the more these companies make from advertisements, which is where most of their revenue is generated, he said.
‘Incredibly dangerous’
Marketplace was interested in seeing if the social media giants had made improvements since a 2020 CCDH study, which found the companies only acted on five per cent of misinformation it reported. The CCDH cross-referenced and analyzed CBC’s data to ensure problem posts did breach company policies for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, took action on about 18 per cent of the posts flagged on both platforms. That number jumped to about 67 per cent after Marketplace shared its findings.
One of the posts that is still up on Facebook weeks later shows a picture of Bill Gates with the headline: “New vaccine causes sterility in 97% of women!” There is no evidence that links coronavirus vaccines to sterility.
Another post shows a homeopathic product, which purportedly “enhanced immunity” against COVID-19 and promised “reduced frequency and shorter duration of symptoms.” It sells for $49.99 US.
There are no homeopathic remedies that can cure or alleviate COVID-19 symptoms.
“Completely ridiculous and a little bit infuriating,” Timothy Caulfield, a health law and policy expert at the University of Alberta, said after he was shown the post. “Homeopathic is an easy one because it’s completely scientifically implausible. That one is so clearly wrong and harmful it should be taken down immediately.”
Caulfield says self-reporting tools on social media must lead to action otherwise people will stop using them, but understands the difficulty of monitoring platforms that have billions of users.
“The numbers of messages that have to be evaluated are just huge so I think that is one of the great challenges of social media: how can you meaningfully monitor all of these posts, but we know we need to,” said Caulfield. “The challenge is there but the harm is real.”
Over the course of Marketplace‘s test, Facebook did take down a number of prominent accounts on its platforms, including Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Instagram account, which had close to a million followers — the result of a new policy in February that outright prohibited the posting of any anti-vaccination or COVID misinformation. RFK Jr.’s Facebook account, and the Facebook and Instagram accounts of his group, Children’s Health Defense — with a combined following of close to 700,000 — are still up.
The company disputed that some of the posts Marketplace flagged violated its protocols, and said in an emailed statement that it had “removed millions of pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram that violate our COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation policies — including two million since February alone.”
YouTube, Twitter performed worst
Of the four platforms Marketplace tested, Twitter and YouTube took the least action.
Twitter initially left up all but two of the 173 posts Marketplace reported — including one by a prominent anti-vaccination leader that called the COVID-19 vaccine a “military-grade, deadly bio-weapon.” The post yielded more than 2,100 likes and 1,400 retweets.
While Twitter has since removed 18 per cent of the posts Marketplace reported, the company would not say why it initially left up the majority of flagged posts and said it doesn’t “directly comment on third-party studies.” It pointed to its updated policies, which include a five-strike system for users that would lead to an account deletion.
YouTube didn’t take down any of the flagged videos until Marketplace shared its findings. After that, it took down 34 per cent of the reported videos.
But many still remain — including one from a known conspiracist telling his audience that people are sending him information “telling me causes of [COVID] death have been altered.” He said he is also receiving information about, “hospitals that are completely dead, nothing happening in there,” referencing a viral trend early in the pandemic where people would record videos of empty hospitals to try to back up their claims that COVID-19 wasn’t real.
The video has over 700,000 views.
YouTube said in a statement that only some of the videos Marketplace reported violated its policies, and said that since February 2020, it had “removed more than 800,000 videos for violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policies.”
Ahmed says CBC’s results suggest YouTube, Twitter and Facebook may not be paying as close attention to misinformation until news organizations or legislators put them under the microscope.
“What’s really great about this study is that this tells us what they’re doing when they think no one is watching.”
- Watch full episodes of Marketplace on CBC Gem, the CBC’s streaming service.
Health
Avian influenza spread: WHO gives public health warning as FDA calms food safety concerns – Food Ingredients First
23 April 2024 — The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the ongoing spread of avian influenza poses a “significant public health concern” and urged health authorities, especially in the US, to closely monitor infections in cows. However, the US FDA maintains that the virus is not currently a concern to consumer health and downplayed its impact on commercial milk production.
Earlier this month, the largest producer of fresh eggs in the US halted production at a Texas plant after bird flu was detected in its chickens. Cal-Maine Foods said that about 3.6% of its total flock was destroyed after the infection.
However, the virus, also known as H5N1, has now been found in at least 26 dairy herds across eight US states, marking the first time this strain of bird flu has been detected in cattle, according to officials.
At least 21 states have restricted cattle importations from states where the virus is known to have infected dairy cows.
The US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service strongly recommends minimizing the movement of cattle, but has not issued federal quarantine orders.
Public health threat
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed this month that a dairy worker in Texas, who reportedly had exposure to dairy cattle presumed to have had avian influenza, contracted the virus and is now recovering.
“This infection does not change the H5N1 bird flu human health risk assessment for the US general public, which CDC considers to be low,” the agency said in a press release, while acknowledging that people who come into more frequent contact with possibly infected birds or other mammals have a higher risk.
Meanwhile, WHO’s chief scientist, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, told reporters recently in Geneva, Switzerland, that H5N1 has had an “extremely high” mortality rate among the several hundred people known to have been infected with it to date.
US health officials have downplayed the impact of bird flu on food safety and industry production.However, no human-to-human H5N1 transmission has yet been recorded.
“H5N1 is an influenza infection, predominantly started in poultry and ducks and has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic — animal — pandemic,” said Farrar.
“The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens — but now increasingly mammals — the virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans.
“And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission.”
Concerns with cattle
US health officials have stressed that bird flu’s risk to the public is low, and the country’s food supply remains safe and stable.
“At this time, there continues to be no concern that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health or that it affects the safety of the interstate commercial milk supply,” the FDA said in a statement.
According to officials, farmers are being urged to test cows that show symptoms of infection and separate them from the herd, where they usually recover within two weeks.
US producers are not permitted to sell milk from sick cows, while milk sold across state lines must be pasteurized or heat-treated to kill viruses, including influenza.
A dairy worker in Texas reportedly contracted the virus after exposure to cattle.
“We firmly believe that pasteurization provides a safe milk supply,” Tracey Forfa, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, told a webinar audience last week.
However, WHO’s Farrar has urged further caution by public health authorities “because it [the virus] may evolve into transmitting in different ways.”
“Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols? Is it the environment which they’re living in? Is it the transport system that is spreading this around the country?” he said.
“This is a huge concern, and I think we have to…make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.”
According to a new European Food Safety Authority report, outbreaks of avian influenza continue to spread in the EU and beyond.
By Joshua Poole
To contact our editorial team please email us at
editorial@cnsmedia.com
If you found this article valuable, you may wish to receive our newsletters.
Subscribe now to receive the latest news directly into your inbox.
York Region Public Health is reminding residents to keep up to date on their vaccinations as National Immunization Awareness Week begins.
The regional municipality said it is important to stay up to date on recommended vaccinations to ensure protection from contagious diseases. That includes updated COVID-19 vaccinations for vulnerable populations, recommended as part of a spring vaccination campaign.
“We know vaccines are safe and the best way to stay protected against vaccine-preventable disease,” the region said in a news release.
National Immunization Awareness Week runs from April 22 to 30, with this year’s theme being “Protect your future, get immunized.”
This spring, the region is still doing COVID-19 vaccinations. While walk-ins are no longer available as of April 2, you can book an appointment to visit a York Region clinic.
The spring COVID-19 vaccination campaign is aimed at more vulnerable groups who have received a COVID-19 vaccine before. Those include seniors, those living in seniors living facilities like long-term care homes, immunocompromised individuals and those in Indigenous households who are 55 or older. Public health also recommends the COVID-19 vaccine for those who have not yet received one.
York Region Public Health is also reminding residents of the need for other vaccines.
Measles cases have sprung up in Ontario and York Region recently. The region is recommending that people ensure they previously raised two valid doses of the measles vaccine. The region will also start providing measles vaccines April 29 for those overdue and for who do not have access to the vaccine through a health-care provider.
School-aged vaccinations are also available for free for children in junior kindergarten to Grade 12.
You can access immunization information at york.ca/immunziations or by contacting Access York at 1-877-464-9675.
“Vaccination helps protect everyone in our families, communities and schools,” the region said. “ By continuing to stay up to date on your immunizations, you help protect infants who are too young to be vaccinated and those not able to get vaccinated due to medical conditions.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the rising number of bird flu cases has raised “great concern” because it had an “extremely high” mortality rate among those who had been infected around the world.
The WHO’s data show that from 2003 through March 2024, a total of 889 worldwide human cases of H5N1 infection had been recorded in 23 countries, resulting in 463 deaths and a 52 percent mortality rate. The majority of deaths occurred in Southeast Asian countries and Egypt.
The most recent death was in Vietnam in late March, when a 21-year-old male without underlying conditions died of the infection after bird hunting. So far, cases in Europe and the United States have been mild.
Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the WHO, said recently that H5N1, predominantly started in poultry and ducks, “has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic — animal — pandemic”.
He said that the great concern is that the virus is increasingly infecting mammals and then develops the ability to infect humans. It would become critical if the virus develops the ability to “go from human-to-human transmission”, Farrar said.
In the past month, health officials have detected H5N1 in cows and goats from 29 dairy herds across eight states in the US, saying it is an alarming development because those livestock weren’t considered susceptible to H5N1.
The development worries health experts and officials because humans regularly come into contact with livestock on farms. In the US, there are only two recorded cases of human infection — one in 2022 and one in April this year in Texas. Both infected individuals worked in close proximity to livestock, but their symptoms were mild.
Wenqing Zhang, head of the WHO’s global influenza program, told the Daily Mail that “bird-to-cow, cow-to-cow and cow-to-bird transmission have also been registered during these current outbreaks, which suggest that the virus may have found other routes of transition than we previously understood”.
Zhang said that multiple herds of cow infections in the US states meant “a further step of the virus spillover to mammals”.
The virus has been found in raw milk, but the Texas Health Services department has said the cattle infections don’t present a concern for the commercial milk supply, as dairies are required to destroy milk from sick cows. In addition, pasteurization also kills the virus.
Darin Detwiler, a former food safety adviser to the Food and Drug Administration and the US Agriculture Department, said that Americans should avoid rare meat and runny eggs while the outbreak in cattle is going on to avoid the possibility of infection from those foods.
Nevertheless, both the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that the risk the virus poses to the public is still low. Currently no human-to-human infection has been detected.
On the potential HN51 public health risk, Farrar cautioned that vaccine development was not “where we need to be”.
According to a report by Barron’s, under the current plan by the US Health and Human Services Department, if there is an H5N1 pandemic, the government would be able to supply a few hundred thousand doses within weeks, then 135 million within about four months.
People would need two doses of the shot to be fully protected. That means the US government would be able to inoculate about 68 million people — 20 percent — of 330 million in case of an outbreak.
The situation is being closely watched by scientists and health officials. Some experts said that a high mortality rate might not necessarily hold true in the event the virus became contagious among people.
“We may not see the level of mortality that we’re really concerned about,” Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University, told The New York Times. “Preexisting immunity to seasonal flu strains will provide some protection from severe disease.”
Agencies contributed to this story.
Peel police chief met Sri Lankan officer a court says ‘participated’ in torture – Global News
An exhibition with a cause: Montreal's 'Art by the Water' celebrates 15 years – CityNews Montreal
Mayor's youth advisory council seeks submissions for art gala – SooToday
Silver investment demand jumped 12% in 2019
12 Bizarre Things People Did Just To Make Social Media Content
Global Media Markets, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F – TV and Radio Broadcasting, Film and Music, Information Services, Web Content, Search Portals And Social Media, Print Media, & Cable – GlobeNewswire
-
Health23 hours agoSee how chicken farmers are trying to stop the spread of bird flu – Fox 46 Charlotte
-
Science21 hours ago
Osoyoos commuters invited to celebrate Earth Day with the Leg Day challenge – Oliver/Osoyoos News – Castanet.net
-
Politics21 hours ago
Haberman on why David Pecker testifying is ‘fundamentally different’ – CNN
-
News22 hours ago
Freeland defends budget measures, as premiers push back on federal involvement – CBC News
-
Economy21 hours ago
The Fed's Forecasting Method Looks Increasingly Outdated as Bernanke Pitches an Alternative – Bloomberg
-
Health20 hours ago
It's possible to rely on plant proteins without sacrificing training gains, new studies say – The Globe and Mail
-
Business20 hours ago
Gildan replacing five directors ahead of AGM, will back two Browning West nominees – Yahoo Canada Finance
-
Tech20 hours ago
Meta Expands VR Operating System to Third-Party Hardware Makers – MacRumors
