Fast Company: Facebook deletes alternative health pages as the war on fake news escalates

My immediate thought is good riddance, how about you?

Facebook deletes alternative health pages as the war on fake news escalates

The purge reportedly began in June, several months after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg publicly vowed to crack down on fake news. While that term is typically associated with politics, misinformation is not limited to partisan topics. Alternative health pages have been known to spread misleading or false information about medicinal remedies that are not backed by traditional science, or debate issues like vaccination.

 

What concerns me though, is the thought of FB playing god in deciding what should or should not be deleted. Not even sure that something should necessarily be removed just because it is alternative health; more about how it's promoted - honestly or deceitfully. I worry such things can be the thin end of a very large wedge; what else might their strategy migrate to given the chance, and maybe with 'invisible' encouragement from others. S4ME?

 

Those are good points, @Barry

 

I bet the pharma companies were breaking out the champagne on reading this news.

 

Another reason I'm glad to have stopped using facebook. Who's to say old Zuckie thinks CFS being a physical disease is fake news. Or saturated fat being good for you is fake news. Or anything Zuck doesn't like is fake news.

These handful of big companies have a monopoly on social media platforms. Them being the arbitors of what opinions are allowed or not is a very scary though as it's not just as simple as saying, "well don't use there site then". This is because the other sites are tiny in comparison.

These few private companies (who all seem politically aligned) have great control over public opinion. This cannot be a good thing.

 

I know that Newport Pharmaceuticals had planned to do a multicentre trial of Imunovir in the 2000s. Then it was dropped. I read somebody who had an interest in the drug saying they heard it was because CBT and GET had been recommended by the NICE guidelines.

I want pharma to be investing in our illness. I don’t think they should be seen as necessarily “the bad guys”.

Drug trials are expensive: most are not paid for by patient charities or MRC-type bodies.

 

On the basis that my idea of what constitutes worthwhile "alternative health" information or advice or treatments might be quite different from the ideas of my neighbours, my husband, my doctor, my friends... I'm against this idea.