A YouTube spokesperson said the company removes “content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice for covid-19,” which includes the “Plandemic” video. The video makes the false claim that billionaires aided in the spread of the coronavirus to further the spread of vaccines. ADBy the time it was removed from Facebook, it had racked up “1.8 million views, including 17,000 comments and nearly 150,000 shares,” Digital Trends reported. Many times, “these are recycled from earlier conspiracy theories,” said Mike Wood, a psychologist and expert on belief in conspiracy theories, who studied the spread of misinformation during the Zika outbreak in 2016. “In a pandemic, there’s immediately going to be conspiracy theories that the virus is either harmless, a bioweapon that’s going to kill everybody or an excuse for the government to give a vaccine that is going to kill everybody.”ADSocial media companies have struggled to fight misinformation.

Source: Washington Post May 07, 2020 22:10 UTC