Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & YouTube Have All Become Search Engines

Access to reliable information during the Coronavirus pandemic is of vital importance for public health. Unfortunately,  social media networks are spreading misinformation and causing harm.

In March 2020 Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube collectively announced  they would combat “fraud and misinformation about the virus” and the major social media platforms have come under increasing pressure to regulate misinformation hosted by their sites, this continues to be a problem.

Earlier in the year Facebook announced, “Today we’re announcing the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information Center, featured at the top of News Feed, to provide a central place for people to get the latest news and information as well as resources and tips to stay healthy and support their family and community.....It includes real-time updates from national health authorities and global organizations such as the World Health Organisation, as well as helpful articles, videos and posts about social distancing and preventing the spread of COVID-19”. At the beginning of the pandemic, confusion about symptoms, causes, and treatments reigned.

Viral posts claimed a runny nose was not a sign of the disease, or that garlic, alcohol, or sunlight were good preventative measures. 

A range of medicines have been tried and tested, including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, and some others were found to be effective, others less so. If more speculation or misinformation exists around these terms than credible facts, then search engines often present that to people who, in the midst of a pandemic, may be in a desperate moment. This can lead to confusion, conspiracy theories, self-medication, stockpiling, and overdoses.

These invisible moments of vulnerability are known as data voids, which occur when there are high levels of demand for information on a topic, but low levels of credible supply.

Data voids were defined by a senior engineer at Microsoft, Michael Golebiewski, and describe vulnerabilities that emerge from search engines like Google. A distinction is usually drawn between search engines and social media platforms. Whereas the primary interface of search engines is the search bar, the primary interface of social media platforms is the feed: algorithmic encounters with posts based on general interest, not a specific question you’re searching to answer. It’s therefore easy to miss the fact that data voids exist here, too:

Even though search isn’t the primary interface, it’s still a major feature. And with billions of users, they may be creating major social vulnerabilities.

Google is doing important work on addressing data voids and has already set the standard for search engine analytics with Google Trends, a feature that shows how frequently a given search term is entered into Google's search engine relative to the site's total search volume over a given period of time. Google is also is working on directly addressing data voids with Question Hub, a tool designed to identify “content gaps” and work with fact checkers to fill them. 

Social media platforms are not search engines, although they are often used to find information in the same way. An example of this problem can be demonstrated by a search for the term “vaccine” on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit, which produce a range of bizarre results where  users are unable to analyse search interest, results and voids.

There is a clear public health interest need for social media platforms take action to prevent harmful information about vaccination and bogus treatments  becoming mainstream.

Facebook:     Nieman Lab:         FirstDraftNews:        The Verge:     

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