A small subset of Facebook users are responsible for most of the platform’s posts expressing skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines, researchers at the company reported.
The social media giant has been trying to track the spread of content that could sow doubts about the vaccines as officials distribute them across the country, the Washington Post reported.
Facebook has banned totally false claims about COVID vaccines since December, but the company has been working to examine posts that express concerns about them without violating site rules.
Early findings from the research suggest that a handful of Facebook users in the U.S. are driving this content, according to the Washington Post, which obtained documents related to the study.
For example, data scientists divided U.S. users, pages, and groups into 638 “population segments” and found that only 10 of them contained half of all so-called hesitant content on the platform. , according to the newspaper.
And only 111 users were behind half of the hesitant content in the segment with the most hesitant posts, the story says.
Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever did not provide details of the study’s findings, but confirmed to The Post that the investigation is ongoing.
Lever said the study is part of Facebook’s efforts to help users find information about COVID-19 vaccines and to combat misinformation about traits. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced on Monday a campaign to distribute information on where to get vaccinated.
“We routinely study things like voting, bias, hate speech, nudity, and COVID, to understand emerging trends so we can build, refine, and measure our products,” Lever said in a statement.
“Public health experts have made it clear that combating vaccination vaccination is a top priority in the response of COVID, so we have launched a global campaign that has already connected 2 billion people to reliable information from experts in health and we have eliminated false claims about COVID and vaccines, “he added.” This ongoing work will help inform our efforts. “