Lil' Brian: Anti-Vaxxers on FB Are ‘Lonely,’ Sharing ‘Lies,’ Forming a Community Around Those ‘Lies’

STELTER: “That’s why I’m a little uncomfortable with the obsession over Facebook as if it’s the only source of misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. That’s what the Biden White House is focusing on right now, Facebook. The Surgeon General came out with this warning focusing on social media platforms, including Facebook. But we have to recognize there are dozens of reasons for vaccine hostility, and Facebook is intensifying many of them because of the sense of community that forms there. When you look through that #vaccineskill hashtag, it gets really sad. You see lonely people trying to connect with one another by sharing lies, forming community around those lies, enhancing each other’s fears, but trying to make friends. The impact of this technology is so profound. It’s something that Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t have possibly imagined when he invented the ship and invented the shipwreck. And the truth is we just don’t know that much about it. We don’t actually know much about the platform. And it’s unclear whether Facebook actually knows the inner workings of what its algorithms do, of how the platform affects people.”