The “relationship status” between our social media platforms, COVID-19 vaccines, and our government has become, well, “complicated” — but it doesn’t have to be this way.
The fix for this complicated relationship status rests on both improving health literacy and rooting out misinformation, which all too often is allowed to spread across social platforms like wildfire. But this dynamic is not the fault of a singular person, entity, or company. It’s a collective conundrum that requires a genuine public-private partnership — and plan — to solve.
From the health literacy perspective, doctors need to make their presence known online. It’s the absence of evidence-based doctors online that has created a fertile ground where misinformation peddlers flourish. I, myself, am a doctor and content creator with more than 17 million subscribers, and I’ve been trying to do my part to combat some of the worst of the COVID-19 misinformation out there, recently sitting down at the White House with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA. But I am only one doctor. The fact that more than 500 hours of content is uploaded every minute to YouTube alone demands we all do more.
We need a federal office of social media that is non-political, science-led, and focused on helping federal agencies with medical ties — such as the FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS, and others — work with platforms to respond more rapidly to misinformation, particularly as it relates to COVID-19 and vaccines.
Now, let’s be clear, social media platforms aren’t posting the health misinformation that spurs confusion and frustration, nor are they promoting it directly. Misinformation is algorithm driven, and algorithms are human (psychologically) driven. All it takes is one post, shared and amplified, to begin the cycle of misinformation. The more extreme the opinion, the more attention, because “outrage as a business model” is a real thing, and some people clearly bank on it.
These kinds of people aren’t easily stopped, but their polluting tactics can be managed and ameliorated with a formal, go-to federal office that works with social media platforms to enact a plan and enforcement strategy that fills the current voids in policy, rapid response, and agency-to-agency communication. These voids are where troubles can metastasize.
To enact this plan, though, we need a government that understands how the platforms work in the first place. And it also means we need platforms to be more willing to share aspects of their data and methods with the government to get it done. This requires a legitimate public-private partnership — and creating a federal office can help forge it fast.
Creating a federal office of social media — something similar to what the State Department has done at a foreign relations level — would be the ultimate “collab” because it would advance discussion on needed solutions in a more formal way, while giving platforms a place to go with unsolved problems or real-time misinformation crises.
I see it myself. FDA, CDC, and other federal agencies are often slow to respond to misinformation online. Take the recent ivermectin guidance as an example. It took weeks before social media companies received clear guidance from the FDA saying that the drug should not be used to treat or prevent COVID-19. But once they issued the guidance, other evidence had already started to emerge showing that the drug had preliminary potential and the antiparasitic drug is now undergoing further testing in the U.K. PRINCIPLE Trial. But it was too late and many platforms had already overcorrected — issuing removals for all videos discussing ivermectin — because of the delay. I believe part of the reason for this is because there’s just no social media “buck-stop” at the federal level — no point of authority.
The good news, however, is that social media platforms and governments actually see eye-to-eye on this topic more than they might think. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and others don’t want to be responsible for harm caused by misinformation. It’s not good for their reputation — or their bottom lines.
Now, the thing about medicine is that it’s as much an art as it is a science. To shut down all opinions or discussion about novel treatments is a disservice to the public, and I maintain that position. Public discourse must be allowed, but with caveats and enforcement for when debate crosses into flat-out deceit. Promising miracle cures or nefariously misdirecting the public must come with consequences and oversight, similarly to implementing consequences for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. We need ground rules and we need them to be enforced.
Bottom line: Informing the public is just as important as preventing the spread of misinformation in the first place. We must not trade one for the other. We must work harder, faster, and more earnestly to update this very “complicated” relationship status while there’s still time.
I, along with others, am here to help.
Mike Varshavski, DO, is a board-certified family physician and social media influencer with more than 17 million subscribers.
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
