According to reports, the first findings of an internal Facebook study on doubts about the coronavirus vaccine include an overlap between users expressing skepticism about vaccines and accounts affiliated with QAnon conspiracy theory.
Facebook’s internal investigation analyzes posts that are not included in the ban on vaccine misinformation, but are in a grayer area, The Washington Post reported Sunday, citing study documents.
As part of the research, Facebook data scientists divided U.S. users, groups, and pages into 638 segments of the population to examine those who hold the vaccine’s hesitant beliefs, the post reported.
Early evidence of internal findings points to an overlap between vaccine-skeptical communities and those affiliated with unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory, according to the Post.
Facebook had pledged to ban all accounts affiliated with conspiracy theory in October.
However, users are continually forming new QAnon groups, accounts, and pages through contradictory tactics that try to hide their affiliation with conspiracy theory, according to Facebook. As Facebook identifies the pages, they withdraw, according to the company.
Early findings from the internal study also suggest that most of the hesitant content comes from a relatively small subset of users.
The internal study found that only ten of the 638 population segments contained half of all vacancies on the platform and, in the population segment with the most vacancies, only 111 users contributed to half of the vacancies. ‘this hesitation, according to the Post.
The document seen by the post did not identify how Facebook defined a segment or a clustered community, but noted that the segments could be at least 3 million people.
Facebook says it is standard to study the content types of its platforms to understand trends and identify emerging issues to determine action against potentially harmful content.
The reported study is just one of the ways Facebook has been taking steps to combat coronavirus vaccine misinformation amid intense scrutiny by officials over the management of these false claims.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have partnered with more than 60 global health experts and studied COVID-19-related content, including vaccines and misinformation, to inform our policies,” the Facebook spokesman said. Dani Lever, in a statement.
Facebook “routinely” studies issues such as COVID-19, voting, bias, and hate speech to “understand emerging trends to understand emerging trends so we can build, refine, and measure our products,” Lever said.
“Public health experts have made it clear that combating vaccine vaccination is a top priority in COVID’s response, which is why we have launched a global campaign that has already connected 2 billion people to reliable information from experts in “We have eliminated false claims about COVID and vaccines. This ongoing work will help inform our efforts,” Lever added.
In February, Facebook said it would remove all rejected claims about the coronavirus vaccine during the pandemic, and on Monday the company said it had removed 2 million content from Facebook and Instagram.
In a blog post on Monday, Facebook also said it would expand its efforts to combat coronavirus vaccine misinformation by adding tags to all posts discussing vaccines.
Facebook said it will initially add tags with World Health Organization information to posts dealing with vaccine safety and in the coming weeks will roll out tags for more general posts about vaccines that will target users for information. about them.
Facebook’s push to update its policy comes next President Biden
Joe Biden The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Facebook – Biden will be launched, all senator of the relief law COVID-19 The Oregon senator takes the lead in the Democratic debate on filibustering This week: Democrats observe the next step after the coronavirus relief bill wins MORElast week, indicating that all American adults will be eligible for the vaccine by May 1 at the latest.
Meanwhile, polls have indicated that there will be challenges over vaccine vaccination, especially among some populations.
A PBS NewsHour / NPR / Marist poll published last week found that nearly 30% of Americans in general said they do not plan to get vaccinated. Among men who identify as Republicans, the same survey found that nearly half said they had no plans to get the coronavirus vaccine.