Since the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, Google banned political ads on its platform, aiming to halt the spread of political misinformation and conspiracy theories. Facebook joined Google in this ban, reimposing it after the Georgia Senate runoffs. While the ad bans worked to combat the spread of harmful false information in ads, it has had several drawbacks. For example, it has caused blockages in communication between political campaigns and voters during times before state and local elections.
Perhaps one of the most relevant impacts of political ad bans during this period of time is Facebook’s blockage of pro-vaccine messages. While healthcare providers work to promote the vaccines to the public, these messages of awareness are getting flagged and categorized as a “political message,” needing to be sent into review. While the sponsors of the ad have the option to appeal, they state that this process is tedious, and that there are more pressing issues to focus on, like the new strains of the virus and the rapid distribution of vaccines. One of the sponsors of these blocked ads state that Facebook has “made it very difficult for the township in our efforts to inform our residents about important information regarding Covid-19 registration and updates.” The California Medical Association, posts from European Union institutions, and the CDC have also been subject to the mis-labeling of pro-vaccine posts.
Facebook responded, saying that “While we have temporarily paused ads about social issues, elections or politics, we continue to allow ads about Covid-19 that promote vaccine efficacy, and have made our guidance to advertisers on how to run them publicly available.” However, public officials continue to show that their routine messages regarding the effectiveness and phases of availability of the vaccine are blocked. Researchers at Northwestern University cite that targeting individuals who are more vaccine hesitant with personalized pro-vaccine ads is extremely important, and Facebook’s system needs to work to achieve this goal.
Misinformation or even the lack of scientific, pro-vaccine messages have significant effects on people’s decisions of getting vaccinated or not. For example, many Army units are seeing that only ⅓ of their service members are agreeing to get the vaccine, prompting concern because they live and work closely in high-risk environments. Much of this hesitancy is rooted in harmful conspiracy theories and a lack of access to accurate scientific information. In the midst of scrambling to put out pro-vaccine messages and convincing their members to trust the vaccine through information sessions, town halls, scientific data, videos of service leaders getting vaccinated, etc., generals share theories many hesitant individuals used as excuses: “I heard that this thing is actually a tracking device.” General David Doyle says “They tell me they don’t have high confidence in the vaccine because they believe it was done too quickly.” Sentiments like these demonstrate how influential, yet dangerous the media can be. In relation to our Gov lessons about the vast influence that the government and large corporations have on the media, we are able to see the adverse effects of the spread of false information in serious times, and there are some implications towards free speech and its possible harm to society. The conspiracy theory that the vaccine is a tracking device is a form of fear mongering that can be combatted by the spread of information debunking this ridiculous statement. Additionally, a common sentiment amongst not only service members but also the general public is that the vaccine isn’t trustworthy due to the speed at which it was developed. However, one must note that because COVID-19 is so similar to other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, scientists were able to build off of past research of these viruses, especially the SARS vaccine. Additionally, the coronavirus vaccine was developed quickly due to its rapid, tremendous financial support, a factor that typically causes other vaccines to take almost a decade to develop. Other reasons for its quick development include differences in testing/experimentation processes, mRNA technology, and global participation. Reassuring information like this is imperative to debunk uninformed statements like the ones above; thus, it is crucial for large platforms whose ad bans are unintentionally blocking pro-vaccine information to help control this pandemic and guide us toward herd immunity by tracking and targeting hesitant groups in order to convince them of the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. In the meantime, service leaders and generals are working to make vaccination mandatory, and are setting up incentives, like shorter quarantine time if a certain percentage of a unit is vaccinated. What other strategies do you think leaders can use to encourage service members and the general public to take the vaccine?
Google recently lifted their political ad ban, on February 24th, 2021, in hopes of minimizing interference with 2022 midterm election messages and fundraising campaigns. They will be regaining a large percentage of their revenue from their advertisements. How might this affect the spread of pro-vaccine messages, assuming that large platforms like Facebook will follow suit?
Politico- Facebook
Politico- Google
Forbes
ABC News
Houston Methodist
6 comments:
Thank you for bringing the issue with myths about the vaccine into the spotlight. I think the majority of people that are on social media have seen some sort of critics about the vaccine. The myths that are circulating on the internet are inherently affecting the public's desire to administer the vaccine. I personally have heard multiple reasons why some people are choosing to not administer the vaccine, when it may be available to them. Some sound quite outrageous and at the end of their statement, they always claim it's something that they heard from someone or saw on social media. I think Facebook's ban on political ads had a great impact on users when the function filters out both myths and truths for the vaccine. The majority of the population won't actively seek out information on the internet and do research to confirm what they saw was backed up by some sort of medical/professional evidence. By allowing the pro-vaccine ads to resurface, I think that there will be more people that are willing to get the vaccine, even if not, they'll stop the spread of myths.
This definitely reeks of bureaucracies drawbacks. When the process of helping the electorate gets bogged down by a few in a company, committee, etc., it appears that we are suffering from either red tape or inadequate service. Though I’d support restricting political misinformation and conspiracy theories, at some point the “central planner” of the social media companies are bound to fail. Of course it is not the perfect comparison to a free market, but clearly the free dissemination of credible, scientific ads are advantageous to the public. Itt is a time of crisis, so bodies of authority, in this case social media companies, often need to insert themselves to regulate and prevent their governed from falling apart. But the many bureaucracies of government need to function together well, and in this case the “department” of medical organizations should not be forced to undergo an inefficient and blocking process to achieve urgent advertisement goals. Perhaps our real government should step in to make these central planner-like social media companies support pro-vaccine ads, as they are clearly convincing people and can save lives.
I find it odd that media companies are fact checking the virus related posts. especially ones that are state sponsored but I guess companies can control their platforms Bots at designed by the companies must find in someway ads meet their requirements for a political message. It seems that the problem could be avoid by changing the tag lines on the post.
While companies such as Google and Facebook may have had good intentions or wished to at the very least reduce public backlash against their policies, it is apparent that their approach is flawed. While typically I think that platforms should be able to act with more independence from the government and promote what they wish, the difference with large corporations such as Facebook and Alphabet (Google's parent company) is that their platforms so vastly outnumber and outcompete others that it becomes the standard for them to be used, with fewer choices for consumers due to the many limitations involved with other platforms.
Now more than ever is it important for individuals to be vaccinated, as by choosing to not be vaccinated, one can be directly putting the lives of others at risk with regards to the novel coronavirus. Many people that oppose vaccines seem to take for granted the absence of other diseases that we no longer fear much of, such as smallpox and polio. The reason for the decline of such diseases is the widespread vaccination of individuals in order to create herd immunity. Those that choose not to be vaccinated for reasons other than medical ones weaken this herd immunity and put those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, such as some cancer patients, at greater risk.
In any case, large corporations such as those discussed in the post should seek to actively work with the government in order to spread factually correct information about the novel coronavirus and the vaccines that have been developed to protect people from it. In doing this, it will allow for a faster return to something close to a pre-pandemic lifestyle for many, improving the efficiency of the economy and allowing for many more people to be employed than are employed at the current time.
To encourage people to get the vaccine, America should open up services that are only available to vaccinated people. In Israel, Royal Caribbean is holding a cruise only for vaccinated people. It will leave Israel and sail to the Greek Islands and Cyprus in May. All passengers will be Israeli citizens and vaccinated if they are over the age of 16. Through services like this, there will be an incentive for people to get their vaccine, so they can enjoy life like it once was. The only problem with this is that America is not tracking who gets a vaccine and who doesn't. This would make it difficult to figure out who is dafe to go on the cruise and who isn't. If that problem is figured out though, this could be a good idea. People will be able to return to normal life, and industries like Cruise Liners and Airplanes will be able to open up again.
Banning political ads to halt the spread of misinformation is a legitimate cause, but the drawbacks have proved to be substantial. Innocuous actions such as political campaigning for local elections and promoting vaccines are undermined in the process. However, I do not think that these companies purposefully intended to block pro-vaccine messages; their approach to banning political ads had unforeseen consequences. I found the Politico article on Facebook particularly interesting; a spokesperson for the California Medical Association believes that its vaccine ad was banned because of an “appearance by a Biden administration official.” I see how employing certain filters such as this one would help ban political ads, but also how it directly conflicts with the ways in which pro-vaccine posts are presented. How can this issue of mislabeling pro-vaccine ads as political messages be solved? Do these companies lift their restrictions on political ads (as they have done recently), or are there alternative solutions? From a technological standpoint, it would be interesting to see if these companies can develop precise algorithms in the future to differentiate between posts such as pro-vaccine ads and political messages to combat similar problems.
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