Covid Deception: Who’s Behind the Misinfo?

With all the misleading and false information about the pandemic going around on social media, you would expect that hundreds or thousands of people are responsible for the spread across the internet’s most popular platforms.

But what if, in reality, there are only 12 prime suspects?

CCDH Claims COVID-19 Hoaxes and Lies on Social Media Are Mostly Thanks to Only a Dozen People

According to a research report [PDF] from The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), most COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is spread by 12 influencers dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen.”

The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about COVID vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months.

After analyzing over 812,000 posts (dated on or between February 1 and March 16) with anti-vaccine content across the three social media platforms, the CCDH found that up to 65 percent of the posts could be attributed to the Disinformation Dozen.

The non-profit organization’s list of misinformation spreaders includes the likes of entrepreneur Joseph Mercola, Children’s Health Defense chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and anti-vaccine activist Kevin Jenkins. The remaining nine are as follows:

• Ty & Charlene Bollinger
• Sherri Tenpenny
• Rizza Islam
• Rashid Buttar
• Erin Elizabeth
• Sayer Ji
• Kelly Brogan
• Christiane Northrup

Even though the Disinformation Dozen has reportedly violated the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter terms of service agreements on numerous occasions, only three of the 12 influencers have been removed from just one platform.

Are Social Media Platforms Doing Enough to Fight Misinformation?

The CCDH says that the best way to combat the spread of harmful information is to de-platform repeat offenders that have big audiences. Have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter been doing that? Well… kind of.

Facebook has been criticized for how it’s dealt with misinformation since the pandemic began. The company has removed 1.3 billion fake accounts from its platform recently, and yet, misleading and false posts still continue to plague the website in great numbers.

Last March, the CCDH published a report on Instagram, claiming that the algorithm recommends false COVID-19 info to users . However, a spokesperson would eventually come forward to dismiss the organization’s findings because they were “out of date” and based on “an extremely small sample size.”

Out of the three platforms, Twitter is probably the best at dealing with misinformation, but that isn’t a very big compliment (considering the other two seemingly haven’t done much).Twitter now bans users that repeatedly tweet misleading info , and affixes warning labels to those tweets.

Unfortunately, even as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter make moves to fight against misinformation, this doesn’t seem to be a battle that any of the platforms is actually winning. Something more aggressive needs to be done, and soon.