Page - 186 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

VULNERABLE186 it has served as a primary source of news for many in the general public.12 Indeed, more and more people are turning to social media to keep up-to-date on developments surrounding the pandemic.13 It has been reported that Twitter had about “12 million more daily users in the first three months of 2020 than in the last three of 2019.”14 Still, in the context of the “infodemic,” social media platforms have been the focus of much of the concern and policy activity.15 There is some suggestion that the spread of overt misinformation—that is, misinformation provided by known “fake news” sources—on some platforms, such as Facebook, has decreased since the implementa- tion of platform countermeasures, including removing fake accounts and tweaking their algorithm to reduce the reach of debunked arti- cles.16 But on other platforms, including Twitter, the situation has www.scientificamerican.com/article/social-media-posts-and-online-searches- hold-vital-clues-about-pandemic-spread/>. 12. See e.g. Alaa Abd-Alrazaq et al, “Top Concerns of Tweeters During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infoveillance Study” (2020) 22:4 J Medicine Internet Research e19016, DOI: <10.2196/19016>, where the authors analyzed 2.8 million tweets on the pandemic and found tweets on issues such as the source, cause, economic con- sequences, and treatments and cures, concluding: “Social media provides an opportunity to directly communicate health information to the public.” 13. Jeffrey Gottfried & Elisa Shearer, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016” (16 May 2016), online: Pew Research Center <https://www.journalism.org/2016/ 05/ 26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/>. 14. Jon-Patrick Allem, “Social Media Fuels Wave of Coronavirus Misinformation as Users Focus on Popularity, Not Accuracy”, The Conversation (6 April 2020), online: <https://theconversation.com/social-media-fuels-wave-of-coronavirus- misinformation-as-users-focus-on-popularity-not-accuracy-135179>. See also Vengattil Munsif & Dave Paresh, “Twitter Ad Sales Hit by Coronavirus but Active Users Soar” (23 March 2020), online: Reuters <https://www.reuters.com/ article/us-health-coronavirus-twitter/twitter-ad-sales-hit-by-coronavirus-but- active-users-soar-idUSKBN21A3HY>. 15. Ramez Kouzy et al, “Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter” (2020) 12:3 Cureus e7255, DOI: <10.7759/ cureus.7255>. 16. Hunt Allcott, Matthew Gentzkow & Chuan Yu, “Trends in the Diffusion of Misinformation on Social Media” (2019) 6:2 Research & Politics 1 at abstract: “Our results suggest that the relative magnitude of the misinformation problem on Facebook has declined since its peak.” See also Paul Resnick, Aviv Ovadya & Garlin Gilchrist, “Iffy Quotient: A Platform Health Metric for Misinformation” (18 October 2018) at 1, online: School of Information Center for Social Media Respon- sibility,  University  of  Michigan <https://csmr.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/ 2018/10/UMSI-CSMR-Iffy-Quotient-Whitepaper-810084.pdf>: “there has been gradual improvement in Facebook’s Iffy Quotient since mid-2017, with a sub- stantial cumulative impact. […] In 2016 the Iffy sites’ share of attention was about twice as high on Facebook as Twitter; now it is 50% higher on Twitter.”