Ann M. Ravel is the Digital Deception Project director at MapLight and previously served as chair of the Federal Election Commission. Kristin Urquiza is co-founder of Marked By Covid. The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own.
In May 2020, months before a Covid-19 vaccine was available and just before Arizona's infection rate soared, Governor Doug Ducey encouraged residents not to stay home. "I want to encourage people to get out and about," Ducey told listeners of a popular radio show. "If you don't have an underlying health condition, it's safe out there." The interview was then shared on Facebook and Twitter. Many people listened to that dangerous advice — and many, including one of our fathers, Mark Urquiza, paid with their lives after contracting the disease.
Disinformation and misinformation about masks, vaccines and other Covid-19-related topics has been spreading like wildfire across social media. Last month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended from Twitter for a week after making "misleading" claims about vaccines. Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul was suspended from YouTube for a week after posting a video falsely claiming masks are ineffective. According to its policy, YouTube prohibits "content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities' or the World Health Organization's (WHO) medical information about COVID-19."
While these short suspensions are grabbing headlines, they're also obscuring the larger problem that...
Read Full Story: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/perspectives/vaccine-disinformation-social-media/index.html
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