This from CNBC on Google and their moment of medical truth:
Google next month will ban publishers from using its ad platform to show advertisements next to content that promotes conspiracy theories about Covid-19. It will also ban ads that promote those theories. In cases where a particular site publishes a certain threshold of material that violates these policies, it will ban the entire site from using its ad platforms.
Google isn’t alone here. The dangerous situation around COVID forced Facebook and Twitter to finally take a stand on their own Wild West of medical information.
As a pediatrician concerned about the years of vaccine misinformation carried by major internet platforms, I find this interesting. Because controversy breeds traffic. Dangerous misinformation is rarely aligned with reality and it so it makes people look. Then the evidence-based outrage by well-intentioned truth hunters creates a rebound tsunami of attention. And so the more intense the effort to thwart dangerous health advice the greater the growth and visibility of the maligned information. I’ve called this the Goop Effect.
Facebook and Google may be realizing the limits of a free medical information market. When the world uses you as their primary source of information, bad information may not be good for business. While Big Internet capitalized on the vitriolic division created by years of medical misinformation maybe they’re realizing that accountability to a vulnerable health consumer is now a thing.
If you like Google and Their Moment of Medical Truth then you may like the 33 charts Medical Misinformation Archives. It contains everything written here about medical misinformation. In fact, every 33 charts post has tags that will bring you to related writing. Check ‘em out way down at the bottom of every post on the site.