Online misinformation about the virus and vaccines is a major concern.
But this is easier said than done.
These questions are the denominator problem and the distribution problem.
At first glance, thats a stunningly large number.
But its important to remember that this is thenumerator.
To understand what 3.8 billion views in a year means, you also have to calculate thedenominator.
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But these are 3.8 billion content views, not discrete users.
How many pieces of information does the average Facebook user encounter in a year?
Facebook does not disclose that information.
Without knowing the denominator, a numerator doesnt tell you very much.
This means roughly 0.05% of content on Facebook are posts by these suspect Facebook pages.
Is it worrying that theres enough misinformation on Facebook that everyone has likely encountered at least one instance?
Is everyone on Facebook equally likely to encounter health misinformation?
For that, it’s crucial that you know the distribution as well.
Superspreaders or whack-a-mole?
But again, its critical to ask about denominators: How many anti-vaccine groups are hosted on Facebook?
And what percent of Facebook users encounter the sort of information shared in these groups?
Consider Del Bigtree, one of the three most prominent spreaders of vaccination disinformation on Facebook.
Its much harder to ban thousands of Facebook users than it is to ban 12 anti-vaccine celebrities.
This is why questions of denominator and distribution are critical to understanding misinformation online.
If millions of users are each encountering occasional bits of medical misinformation,warning labelsmight be an effective intervention.
And if not, are they afraid of what researchers will find?
