- Facebook, TikTok and Reddit work to eradicate misinformation about ivermectin, an alleged treatment against Covid-19
- Ivermectin is a drug that is administered to animals such as horses and cows.
- Following the arrival of Covid-19, a rapidly expanding global misinformation phenomenon began
The three social networks, Facebook, TikTok and Reddit are suffering a major case of misinformation about Covid-19 and its alleged treatment.
Not only, all over the world, we must face the complications of Covid-19 as a contagious and very dangerous disease; We have been living in a terrain of uncertainty for more than a year that does not allow us to get out of an emotional debacle that began since this madness of the pandemic began.
Now, amid the constant advance of the Delta variant and the emergence of a new one, the Lambda, we must face every day – who are users on some of the social networks – the terrible scenario of misinformation.
Disinformation has always existed, since long before the arrival of the internet, but thanks to its endless scope, this practice has become a real problem for governments, society, users and for the digital platforms themselves.
After the arrival of Covid-19 and, above all, when it became a global threat, there were not a few who predicted that it was a malicious plan by various governments to keep society under control.
Today, more than a year after the first case of Covid-19 was known in the world, these theories are still part of the content that we read daily on social networks. However, a few months to now, when global vaccination against the disease began, this type of information went even further.
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4
– US FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021
Recently, information about a drug that supposedly prevented against Covid-19 circulated on social media. It is about ivermectin, which is administered in animals such as horses or cows and that anti-vaccine groups began to spread on their profiles on Facebook, TikTok and Reddit.
On TikTok, for example, a report from Rolling stone found videos providing said drug as a treatment against Covid-19, videos with hashtags such as # ivermectin4covid and #ivermectinworks that have even had more than a million views. This material, as reported by TikTok, has already been removed from the application.
For their part, on Facebook, anti-vaccine groups have been very active sharing material about ivermectin, from information about the supposed benefits of the drug, to publications about buying and selling it. The application, as revealed in a report, has already deleted more than three thousand sites dedicated to disinformation.
Reddit is also one of the platforms where this phenomenon has occurred. Even a few days ago, moderators of hundreds of subreddits asked the application to take measures to curb misinformation, including that about the use of ivermectin as a treatment for the disease.
The request was rejected by Reddit, claiming that the site is “a space for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with the popular consensus ”.
Disinformation has found a very exposed place to spread all kinds of news, which has the ability to reach unknown corners and generate a great impact among users.
In times of global health emergency, and taking into account that Internet users are at a critical moment, this type of practice has a great influence on users, which once again puts on the table the issue of the regulation of content in the social networks.
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