Instagram is recommending Covid misinformation, including lies about the vaccines, to millions of users during the pandemic, a shocking new report claims.
Posts promoted by the Facebook-owned social network’s algorithm include claims that ‘Covid isn’t real’, ‘vaccines are unsafe and kill children’ and that ‘the pandemic is faked to give the government greater control over the population’.
The report has been authored Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK non-profit organisation, which has also detected antisemitism, misinformation regarding last year’s US election and QAnon content.
CCDH has published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook, which has owned Instagram since 2012.
The letter urges Zuckerberg to ‘fix Instagram’s broken algorithm’ if he truly believes in Facebook’s policies ‘to curb the spread of misinformation’.
Instagram’s algorithm promoted vaccines misinformation, QAnon, and antisemitic conspiracies to millions of users. One post discovered by Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) simply said ‘The virus is a hoax’. Another (left) linked Covid-19 to Donald Trump’s resounding election loss last November
‘The rollout of vaccines across the world has put an end to the coronavirus pandemic in sight,’ reads the open letter to Zuckerberg, which is signed by Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, and six other signatories from figures in scientific and medical fields.
‘Yet misinformation about Covid and vaccine lies threaten to prolong the pandemic, costing lives.
‘Equally concerning is the finding that users who show an interest in one form of misinformation are funnelled dangerous untruths, including QAnon, antisemitism, and election misinformation.
‘If you truly believe in Facebook’s policies and promises to curb the spread of misinformation on its platforms, you would act immediately to disable Instagram’s broken algorithm and fix it.’
In response to the report, a Facebook spokesperson pointed out the report used 104 posts, which they called an ‘extremely small sample size’.
‘This is in stark contrast to the 12 million pieces of harmful misinformation related to vaccines and Covid-19 we’ve removed from Facebook and Instagram since the start of the pandemic,’ the spokesperson said.
‘We’ve been focused on connecting people to credible information, which is why, when people search for content related to Covid-19 and vaccines on our apps, we direct them to authoritative health organisations.
‘We’re also working on improvements to Instagram Search, to make accounts that discourage vaccines harder to find.’
Instagram’s algorithms work by directing user to posts related to a single post they’ve viewed.
Just as a user who shows an interest in a particular footballer by clicking on their post sees more football-related posts, anti-vaccine posts, for example, can end up bombarding a user’s feed.
CCDH said users who follow anti-vaxxers receive recommendations for antisemitic content and QAnon conspiracy theories.
Instagram is therefore introducing users who are interested in one extremist subject to another, meaning the platform is acting as a gateway ‘to more hateful extremist ideologies’, according to CCDH.
For its new report, CCDH created dummy Instagram accounts with the aim of recreating the experience of millions of its users.
The accounts followed by the test accounts totalled 9.9 million followers, suggesting that millions of Instagram users are likely to be receiving the same recommendations.
CCDH volunteers took screenshots of all 104 pieces of misinformation recorded, along with details of the posts and when they were recorded.
Misinformation was largely recommended to users through the platform’s ‘Explore’ and ‘Suggested Post’ features.
One Suggested Post on Instagram said the UK government ‘will attempt to kidnap homeschooled children into state possession’
Both of these features expose Instagram users to content posted by accounts that they don’t follow.
Explore, which was introduced to Instagram shortly after Facebook’s acquisition, is made up of content tailored for each user based on ‘the people you follow or the posts you like’, according to Instagram.
Explore introduced algorithmic recommendations in April 2014.
Suggested Posts, which was rolled out last August in the middle of the pandemic, proved unpopular with many users.
The feature displays posts from accounts you don’t follow when you get to the end of your feed, instead of older posts from people you do follow that you’ve already seen.
Anti-vax content on Instagram claimed vaccines for chicken pox and whooping cough, among others, was developed using ‘lung tissue taken from a 14-week-old aborted human fetus’. Right, a user suggests the events of the last year supports conspiracy theories
Since August, Suggested Posts has recommended dangerous misinformation to millions of users during a pandemic, CCDH said in the report.
‘It is beyond belief that as the pandemic swept the world, Instagram launched a new feature encouraging users to view conspiracy theories and lies about Covid and vaccines,’ said Ahmed.
‘This feature was created in the name of profit, to keep people scrolling so more adverts could be served to them.
‘Algorithms that recommend content are the act of a publisher, making choices as to what readers see, not a neutral platform.
‘This has serious legal and regulatory implications for social media companies and shows their liability for damage to individuals and society.’
Pandemic-denyers – many of who link the effects of Covid-19 to 5G masts – are allowed to spread on Instagram
One Suggested Post, which was endorsed with more than 2,000 likes, said ‘Not a pandemic. Never was. Stop getting tested. Stop wearing your mask.’
Another Suggested Post said the UK government is separating the elderly from their families ‘under the guise of a false pandemic’ and is attempting ‘to kidnap homeschooled children into state possession’.
Yet another post said Covid-19 vaccines might make people ‘more susceptible to more severe disease’ if they’re exposed to coronavirus.
More generally, anti-vax content claimed vaccines for chicken pox and whooping cough, among others, was developed using ‘lung tissue taken from a 14-week-old aborted human fetus’.
Yet another post says Covid-19 vaccines might make people ‘more susceptible to more severe disease’ if they’re exposed to coronavirus
Ahmed claims Instagram has created greater distrust in the Covid vaccine, ‘costing lives and prolonging the pandemic for all of us’.
‘2020 proved that online lies have a cost paid in real lives,’ he said.
‘Instagram must suspend its suggested posts feature until it can be sure it is not promoting misinformation, hate and lies.
‘They also need to rapidly remove the material – much of which contravened their community standards.’
Posts also related to the US election – one proposed that US President Joe Biden ‘is dead’ and so ‘people who have voted for Joe Biden did not vote for him’ and instead voted for the ‘clone Joe Biden’.
Another Suggested Post with more than 2,000 likes called Covid-19 ‘a mostly harmless virus’ used by the Democrat Party to ‘justify sending out massive amounts of Mail-in Ballots, which they then harvested and fraudulently cast’.
Two of the posts identified contained antisemitic imagery – one used the Israeli flag to imply Jews control the government.
The second, from a different account, used the the Israeli flag to link Israel and mask wearing with a ‘Plannedemic’ and a supposed ‘New World Order’.
Overall, of the 104 posts containing misinformation, 58 per cent contained misinformation about Covid, while 21 per cent contained misinformation about vaccines.
In all 12.5 per cent concerned the US election and nearly 9 per cent related to QAnon.
Instagram recommended 104 posts containing misinformation More than half contained Covid misinformation about Covid, while a fifth contained misinformation about vaccines
Posts discovered by CCDH included wacky claims regarding US President Joe Biden’s ‘clone’
Two of the posts identified for the CCDH report contained antisemitic imagery using the Israeli flag
Aaron Drapkin, digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy, said Instagram and other platforms ‘pose a direct threat to public health’ by hosting false claims.
‘It’s concerning that these particularly infectious types of disinformation aren’t being stamped out in a more heavy-handed fashion,’ he said.
‘When recommendation algorithms fail to deal with these issues it throws into question what platforms like Instagram really are.
‘It’s also particularly worrying to see the dredging up of centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes layered on top of comparatively modern conspiracies as with QAnon.
CCDH urges Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) to ‘act immediately to disable Instagram’s broken algorithm and fix it’
‘This is a sharp reminder that social media not only has the power to quickly breathe life into contemporary myths.’
A previous report from CCDH, published in December, found that anti-vax accounts on Instagram grew their audience by an additional 4.3 million followers in 2020.
Earlier in 2020, CCDH found that only 9.4 per cent of misleading social media posts relating to the coronavirus are removed by social media giants.