THE
DISINFORMATION DOZEN
Introduction
We are in the middle of the deadliest US public health
crisis in more than a century. Covid-19 has killed more than 500,000 Americans
and undermined the livelihood of millions of American workers and families. The
virus has had a particularly devastating impact on Black, Latino, and Native
American communities, all of whom are suffering severe illness and death from
COVID-19 at rates far greater than the general population.
Compounding this crisis, vaccination rates in communities of
color have also lagged those for whites, and skepticism and distrust of the
vaccines are greater in these marginalized communities.
With widespread distribution of coronavirus vaccines, we
have an opportunity to turn a corner on the pandemic. Our recovery depends on
the public’s willingness to receive a vaccine. However, researchers are
increasingly connecting misinformation disseminated via social media to
increased vaccine hesitancy, which will ultimately cause unnecessary deaths.
Living in full view of the public on the internet are a
small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have
their own pockets to line, who are abusing social media platforms to
misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of
vaccines. According to our recent report, anti-vaccine activists on Facebook,
YouTube, Instagram and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers, making
these the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers.
Our research has also found anti-vaxxers using social media
platforms to target Black Americans, exploiting higher rates of vaccine
hesitancy in that community to spread conspiracies and lies about the safety of
Covid vaccines.
Facebook, Google and Twitter have put policies into place to
prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation; yet to date, all have failed to
satisfactorily enforce those policies. All have been particularly ineffective
at removing harmful and dangerous misinformation about coronavirus vaccines,
though the scale of misinformation on Facebook, and thus the impact of their
failure, is larger.
Further, they have all failed to remove the accounts of
prominent anti-vaxxers who have repeatedly violated their terms of service, as
documented in later sections of this report.
Executive
Summary
1. 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.
2. Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was
shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1
February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is
attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.
3. Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and
Twitter’s terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain
on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from
just one platform.
4. This is the product of a series of failures from social
media platforms:
a. Research conducted by CCDH last year has shown that
platforms fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation
reported to them.
b. CCDH’s recent report, Malgorithm, uncovered evidence that
Instagram’s algorithm actively recommends similar misinformation.
c. Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that
their total following across platforms now stood at 59.2 million in December,
an increase of 877,000 more than they had in June.
d. CCDH’s ongoing tracking shows that the 20 anti-vaxxers
with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total
cross-platform following of 59.2 million.
5. Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over
689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that
content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online
anti-vaxxers.
6. Facebook’s own internal analysis of vaccine hesitant
content on its platform is likely to underestimate the influence of leading
anti-vaxxers by failing to address the ultimate source of this content, and by
the recorded failure of its algorithms to identify content concerning vaccines.
7. Analysis of over 120,000 anti-vaccine tweets collected in
the last two months shows that up to 17 percent feature the Disinformation
Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.
8. The most effective and efficient way to stop the
dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible
repeat offenders, who we term the Disinformation Dozen. This should also
include the organisations these individuals control or fund, as well as any
backup accounts they have established to evade removal.
9. Platforms should establish a clear threshold for
enforcement action, such as two strikes, after which restrictions are applied
to accounts short of deplaforming them.
10. Users should be presented with warning screens when
attempting to follow links to sites known to host vaccine misinformation, and
users exposed to posts containing misinformation should be shown effective
corrections.
11. Facebook should not allow private and secret
anti-vaccine Groups where dangerous anti-vaccine disinformation can be spread
with impunity.
The
Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of antivaccine content
At the outset of this research, we identified a dozen
individuals who appeared to be extremely influential creators of digital
anti-vaccine content. These individuals were selected either because they run
anti-vaccine social media accounts with large numbers of followers, because
they produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or because their growth was
accelerating rapidly at the outset of our research in February. Full profiles
of each are available at the end of this report.
1. Joseph Mercola
2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
4. Sherri Tenpenny
5. Rizza Islam
6. Rashid Buttar
7. Erin Elizabeth
8. Sayer Ji
9. Kelly Brogan
10. Christiane Northrup
11. Ben Tapper
12. Kevin Jenkins
Our analysis of over 812,000 posts extracted from Facebook
and Twitter between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of
anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.
This shows that while many people might spread anti-vaccine
content on social media platforms, the content they share often comes from a
much more limited range of sources. Exposure to even a small amount of online
vaccine misinformation has been shown by the Vaccine Confidence Project to
reduce the number of people willing to take a Covid vaccine by up to 8.8
percent.
Platforms
have failed to act on the Disinformation Dozen Despite repeatedly violating
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter’s terms of service agreements, nine of the
Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been
comprehensively removed from just one platform.
This is an extension of platforms’ failure to act on vaccine
misinformation. Research conducted by CCDH last year has shown that platforms
fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to
them, and we have uncovered evidence that Instagram’s algorithm actively
recommends similar misinformation.
Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that
their total following across platforms now stands at 59.2 million as a result
of these failures. The 20 anti-vaxxers with the largest followings account for
over two-thirds of this total.
The
Disinformation Dozen account for up to 73% of Facebook’s anti-vaxx content
Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over
689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that
content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online
anti-vaxxers.
This analysis is based on a representative sample of 483
pieces of anti-vaccine content that are known to be circulating in anti-vaccine
Facebook Groups. We collected this sample by analyzing anti-vaccine posts
containing URL links from 10 private and 20 public anti-vaccine Facebook Groups
between 1 February and 16 March 2021.
Groups in this sample have between 2,500 and 235,000 members
and generate up to 10,000 posts per month. Researchers then analyzed the
content of these URL links, tagging each of them to indicate whether they
contained a member of the Disinformation Dozen or originated from a website
controlled by or related to one of those members.
For example, URL links to articles hosted on Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense website were attributed to Kennedy,
Jr.
Finally, in order to establish the full distribution of this
content on Facebook, we used Facebook’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool to
establish how many times these URLs have been shared on the platform. This
revealed that the anti-vaccine content in our sample had been posted or shared
across Facebook a total of 689,404 times.
Content attributed to members of the Disinformation Dozen
had been posted or shared 503,896 times, representing 73.1 percent of the total
anti-vaccine posts represented by our sample.