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+--- Thread: Article Nobel disease + No evidence of YouTube antivaxx + Facebook's design: misinformation (/thread-14679.html)
Nobel disease + No evidence of YouTube antivaxx + Facebook's design: misinformation - C C - Sep 16, 2023
(Nobel community) Nobel Prize disease: Why some great scientists eventually go crazy
https://bigthink.com/the-past/nobel-disease-great-scientists-go-crazy/
KEY POINTS: Winning the Nobel Prize is the ultimate professional achievement for a scientist. The honor is so great, that a Nobel Laureate may feel as if their ideas and judgments should never be questioned again. This aloof status, along with the pressures of fame, can cause Nobel Laureates to spend their later years chasing impossible, pseudoscientific, or outright insane ideas... (MORE - details)
INCLUDED: William Shockley ..... Brian Josephson ..... James Watson ..... Linus Pauling ..... Stephen Hawking didn't win, but receives an honorable mention
Study: No evidence that YouTube promoted anti-vaccine content during COVID-19 pandemic
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001628
INTRO: New research led by data science experts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and United Nations Global Pulse found that there is no strong evidence that YouTube promoted anti-vaccine sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, performed an algorithmic audit to examine if YouTube’s recommendation system acted as a “rabbit hole,” leading users searching for vaccine-related videos to anti-vaccine content... (MORE - details, no ads)
Facebook's design makes it unable to control misinformation
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001084
INTRO: As misinformation flourished online during the Covid-19 pandemic, a number of platforms announced policies and practices aimed at combating the spread of misinformation. Did those efforts work?
New research published today in Science Advances suggests that the Covid-19 vaccine misinformation policies of Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, were not effective in combating misinformation. The study, led by researchers at the George Washington University, found that Facebook’s efforts were undermined by the core design features of the platform itself.
“There is significant attention given to social media platforms and artificial intelligence governance today. However, this discussion largely focuses on either content or algorithms. To effectively tackle misinformation and other online harms, we need to move beyond content and algorithms to also focus on design and architecture,” says David Broniatowski, lead study author and an associate professor of engineering management and systems engineering at GW. “Our results show that removing content or changing algorithms can be ineffective if it doesn't change what the platform is designed to do – enabling community members to connect over common interests – in this case, vaccine hesitancy – and find information that they are motivated to seek out.” (MORE - details, no ads)