Cat Memes, Making Social Media Less Viral, Inoculated Newsletter (02.12.2021)

Hey {first_name, "there"}, you're reading Inoculated, a weekly newsletter that explores the intersection of anti-vaccine beliefs, technology, and politics. I'm Eva von Schaper and I write this newsletter together with Daiva Repečkaitė. If you like the newsletter, listen to our podcast, The Inoculation!

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📰News of the week:

1. Ways to make social media less viral.

2. Facebook and Google fund global misinformation, paying millions of dollars to the operators of clickbait pages.

3. The company formerly known as Facebook took down global disinformation networks, including some tied to anti-vaccine groups.

3. Those cat pictures? They might be spreading disinformation.

⬆️ Re-up of the week:

More on how to stop disinformation before it gets shared:

How to Stop Misinformation Before It Gets Shared

It’s never been easier for mistruths to go viral, and content moderation is inadequate. What social media needs is some old-fashioned friction.

WIREDCondé Nast

Trolling for Truth on Social Media

What 1990s Internet protest movements share with today’s disinformation campaigns

Scientific AmericanJoan Donovan

🎁Bonus read of the week:

How Disinformation Corrodes Democracy

Biden’s summit must confront the scourge of false narratives.

Foreign AffairsNina Jankowicz

🔬Research of the week:

Word camouflage to evade content moderation - EU DisinfoLab

By Ana Romero-Vicente, EU DisinfoLab Researcher Introduction Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have all taken additional steps to crack down on Covid-19 falsehoods, although it is proven that they are not always effective, and their AI detection system fails to remove most of the problematic…

EU DisinfoLab

That's it for this week. Is there a story we should add to next week's newsletter? Someone we should interview on our podcast? Ping us TheInoculation@gmail.com!

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