According to a new Wall Street Journal report, anti-vaccine activists flooded Facebook to sow doubt about the COVID-19 vaccines, overwhelming efforts to stop them, even as the company told the world that it was not responsible for vaccine hesitancy.
According to one document obtained by the newspaper, of the approximately 150,000 users posting in Facebook Groups disabled for spreading Covid-19 misinformation, 5% produced half of the posts, and 1,400 invited half of the new members.
According to USA TODAY, the report paints a picture of a company that was outfoxed by a small but shrewd group of anti-vaccine activists known as “big whales.”
Facebook researchers in May compared the problem to QAnon and allegations of election fraud “with a relatively few number of actors creating a large percentage of the content and growth”.
The other issue was that these same activists were targeting Facebook comments, giving the impression that vaccine scepticism and resistance were more widespread than they were.
A Facebook researcher discovered that two-thirds of comments were “anti-vax.”
According to Facebook Spokesperson Aaron Simpson, the documents unearthed in the report show the company’s routine process in navigating difficult challenges.
“Narrowly characterising leaked documents doesn’t accurately represent the problem, and it also ignores the work that’s been underway to make comments on posts about Covid-19 and vaccines safer and more reliable,” Simpson added.
