Healthcare Professionals Urge Facebook to Disclose COVID-19 Disinformation
On Nov. 3, The Washington, D.C.-based Doctors for America (DFA), posted a letter signed by hundreds of healthcare professionals urging Facebook to release data on the extent of COVID-19 disinformation on the platform. DFA is a 501 national, multi-specialty organization of physicians and medical students in the United States with a stated goal of improving affordable healthcare access.
The letter states that “The recent Facebook whistleblower disclosures have confirmed what many of us have suspected for a long time: that Facebook has repeatedly stonewalled the public, lawmakers, and academics over the last 18 months despite having had “deep knowledge” about the scope and nature of COVID-19 and vaccine disinformation across its apps. For example, it has known what kinds of users were most likely to share falsehoods, and that authoritative sources on Facebook had become “cesspools of anti-vaccine comments” that created “a huge problem” that the company needed to fix.”
Further, “This deception must end now. So many deaths could have been prevented, and we must act with haste to prevent more, particularly with vaccines becoming imminently available for young children. We simply cannot afford another deadly round of covid and vaccine misinformation.”
On July 15, 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued the first Surgeon General's Advisory of this Administration to warn the American public about the urgent threat of health misinformation. On Aug. 4, Healthcare Innovation covered an Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) press briefing, in which Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., vice provost for global initiatives, University of Pennsylvania, touched on the current state of education regarding COVID-19 and vaccinations. Healthcare Innovation wrote that “Emanuel also commented on education regarding the vaccine, saying that ‘There has also been a major educational initiative. Obviously, this battling a major disinformation initiative being circulated out there. I don’t think this is misinformation, I think it is clear it is disinformation, that false facts are being spread about the vaccine.’”
“All of us—including technology platforms like Facebook—have a moral and civic duty to limit the spread of health disinformation,” the letter continues. “That is why we join Surgeon General Murthy as he calls upon technology companies to operate with greater transparency and accountability. Facebook must take immediate, urgent action to stop the deadly spread of COVID-19 disinformation on its platforms. Facebook must disclose all data about the scope, reach, and content of this disinformation and its impact on users for evaluation by independent public health researchers. Data that has already been released by Facebook on this landscape has fallen far short of what the public deserves to know. For Facebook to achieve actual transparency, it must go beyond providing select data points to the public and provide meaningful data from its vast data trove to the public health community. This will assist experts in understanding both how disinformation has rampantly spread on the platform and how to overcome the skepticism about vaccines that has arisen from it.”
The letter concludes, “Let us work together to prevent even more suffering and death, particularly amongst some of the most vulnerable members of our society: our children. Put saving lives ahead of a narrow-minded view of your business. Rather than allowing COVID to continue to kill us, help us bring this national nightmare to an end. Facebook, disclose your data NOW.”
