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Most COVID vaccine disinformation can be traced to just 12 people on social media

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As millions of Americans have raced to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, millions of others have held back. Vaccine hesitancy is nothing new, of course, especially with new vaccines, but the information people use to weigh their decisions matters greatly. When choices based on flat-out wrong information can literally kill people, it's vital that we fight disinformation every which way we can.

Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization dedicated to disrupting online hate and misinformation, and the group Anti-Vax Watch performed an analysis of social media posts that included false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines between February 1 and March 16, 2021. Of the disinformation content posted or shared more than 800,000 times, nearly two-thirds could be traced back to just 12 individuals. On Facebook alone, 73% of the false vaccine claims originated from those 12 people.

Dubbed the "Disinformation Dozen," these 12 anti-vaxxers have an outsized influence on social media. According to the CCDH, anti-vaccine accounts have a reach of more than 59 million people. And most of them have been spreading disinformation with impunity.

"Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter's terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform," the report states. It also says platforms fail to act on 95% of the COVID and vaccine misinformation that is reported to them.

NPR has reported that Facebook has taken down more of the accounts following the publishing of its article on the CCDH analysis.

Despite many people's understandable resistance to censorship, health disinformation carries a great deal of weight—and consequence. As the CCDH writes, "The public cannot make informed decisions about their health when they are constantly inundated by disinformation and false content. By removing the source of disinformation, social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can enable individuals to make a truly informed choice about vaccines."

So who are these 12 individuals? The report names them and provides some basic info about them starting on page 12 of the report (which you can read here). They are:

1. Joseph Mercola

2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger

4. Sherri Tenpenny

5. Rizza Islam

6. Rashid Buttar

7. Erin Elizabeth

8. Sayer Ji

9. Kelly Brogan

10. Christiane Northrup

11. Ben Tapper

12. Kevin Jenkins

Several of these folks are physicians, which ups their credibility in the eyes of their followers. But as vaccine skeptics themselves say, "Follow the money." These anti-vaxxer influencers rake in the dough by preying on people's paranoia with monetized websites and social media posts, as well as by selling books and supplements.

Some of them may be "true believer" conspiracy theorists and some of them may be opportunistic grifters, but they all benefit from misinformation mongering.

In addition to these individuals, the report names organizations linked to them, including:

- Children's Health Defense (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

- Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) (Del Bigtree)

- National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (Barbara Loe Fisher, Joseph Mercola)

- Organic Consumers Association (OCA) (Joseph Mercola)

- Millions Against Medical Mandates

Don't the names chosen for these organizations sound like things many people would support? Who isn't in favor of defending children's health or informed consent? The "National Vaccine Information Center" sounds downright official, right? Organic consumers? That's me. How would people know whether or not these organizations were trustworthy sources of information, especially if people they know and love are sharing posts from them?

They wouldn't. That's the entire problem.

The report offers suggestions for how to handle misinformation pushers, starting with deplatforming.

"The most effective and efficient way to stop the dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible repeat offenders, who we term the Disinformation Dozen. This should also include the organisations these individuals control or fund, as well as any backup accounts they have established to evade removal."

The CCDH also recommends platforms "establish a clear threshold for enforcement action" that serve as a warning before removing someone and present warning screens and effective correction to users when a link they attempt to click leads to a source known to promote anti-vaccine misinformation. In addition, the report recommends that Facebook not allow private and secret anti-vaccine Groups "where dangerous anti-vaccine disinformation can be spread with impunity."

Finally, the CCDH recommends instituting an Accountability API "to allow experts on sensitive and high-importance topics to perform the human analysis that will ultimately make Facebook's AI more effective."

The information age is also the misinformation and disinformation age, unfortunately. When it's people pushing that the moon landing was a hoax, it's annoying, but when it's people pushing falsehoods about a deadly pandemic and the life-saving vaccines that can end it, we can't just brush it off with an eye roll. Disinformation is dangerous, figuring out how to stop it is tricky, but at least knowing where most of it comes from might give us a chance to limit its spread.


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Disinformation campaigns are prevalent during crises. Here’s how you can protect yourself.

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With the COVID-19 Pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests nationwide, and the countdown to the 2020 Presidential election, there has been a flurry of online activity.

We're tweeting about these events, we're sharing news articles about them on Facebook, and we're uploading live videos as events happen during protests. These platforms are being used to communicate, to express outrage, to share what we're witnessing on the streets, to debate ideas, and to campaign for candidates.

This isn't new, of course. Social media has long been a way to get information out quickly.

"When the plane landed on the Hudson, that was one of the first events that was social media first," says Kate Starbird, associate professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. "The news went out via social media first because it was faster. People could actually see what was going on long before people could write a story about it or put it on the news."

Social media has also been lauded as a way for people to get information from a variety of perspectives — everybody can share what they see.

But, she adds, "the problem is that there is some inherent risk and vulnerabilities in getting things at that speed because speed can drive misinformation and mistakes." It's also incredibly difficult to know if all of these voices on social media are real. Some of those accounts might be deliberately trying to spread disinformation.

Disinformation spreads quickly during and after natural disasters, mass shootings, and other dangerous events.

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In fact, for more than a decade, Starbird has been researching how misinformation and disinformation spread online during these kinds of crises.

During a crisis, there's a lot of uncertainty and fear, so we start theorizing — or rumoring — on what to do and that rumoring can create misinformation. Then, political actors can either create additional misinformation or amplify existing rumors to spread false information for political reasons. "When there's fear and anxiety, we're acutely vulnerable to politicization, misinformation, and disinformation," she says.

For example, climate science denialists can use natural disasters — such as hurricanes or winter storms — to amplify false information that supports their cause.

Not all this disinformation comes from foreign actors.

"We tend to think about it as foreign and Russian," Starbird says, "but that's going to be a small part of what is going on right now. I think we need to be more aware that the tools and techniques of disinformation are democratized… the same kind of techniques are being used by domestic actors, activists, political operatives and foreign campaigns."

Joan Donovan, Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, agrees. During Donald Trump's campaign for president, she saw many white supremacists using these techniques to organize. But she also saw advertisers using similar techniques — such as fake communities, fake engagement, and fake reviews.

Your personal data can be used in disinformation campaigns too.

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Everything you do online generates personal data. Cookies and other web trackers embedded in the sites you visit collect this data when you create social media profiles, buy things online, or simply browse the internet. Many of these cookies then use your data to personalize the ads you see.

"An advertiser can select ads to show you based on the profile they have built from your data," explains Marshall Erwin, Senior Director of Trust and Security at Mozilla, but "these same sophisticated profiles and ad targeting tools allow politicians to slice and dice the electorate. Politicians might have a divisive message that they can target to certain demographics, such as one designed to radicalize white, middle aged men."

This profile can also be used to target you and get you to believe and share disinformation.

If this happened "you'd be getting skewed information targeted towards you based on the customization of the information environment" says Donovan.

This can be especially powerful if you're in a social media echo chamber, where many of your friends and loved one have similar beliefs so you won't see anything contradicting. "If individuals are caught in a media echo chamber and they're not seeking out a diverse set of sources, then they're going to be prone to sharing disinformation, just by the virtue that they're not lumping in the other information that is contradicting what it is that they are seeing," says Donovan. And this helps that disinformation spread to your friends and family.

The algorithms on social networks, like Facebook, also use your data and click history to determine which friends you see updates from and which particular news stories shared by those friends you see. This means you're more likely to see friends that think like you and news stories that align with your worldview, thereby creating an echo chamber.

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Furthermore, your personal data online could also be used to create fake accounts that seem more legitimate. For example, Donovan says a friend of hers had his wedding photos stolen from Flickr and used as part of a meme campaign against Hillary Clinton.

So how can you protect yourself?

1. Slow down.

"As information participants, we're not just information consumers anymore. We're participants and when we're online, we need to slow ourselves down," says Starbird. Before you retweet, go to the account and look at previous tweets. "Make sure you really want to endorse something that the account is saying."

2. If something you read online seems outrageous, double check that story with other trusted news sources.

"Stories meant to stoke rage and anger coupled with novelty — that is, you're not seeing them elsewhere — are the recipes driving people to share false stories," explains Donovan. "So you read a headline that's "Famous actor says some racial slur," don't share it out of rage if no one else is saying it's true."

3. Know it's hard sometimes to recognize fake accounts — they look real.

"As a researcher who studies this, sometimes we can spend hours — I mean 40 hours or even 100 hours — looking at specific accounts to figure out if this is a real person or if it is an impersonator or a troll from another country."

It's hard because the bad actors that create these accounts spend years "seasoning" them to fool you.

For example, Starbird knows of some accounts by Russian actors that started out simply tweeting real information during natural disasters in order to build their audience. Then, once they had the audience, they started sprinkling in fake information or calling real events fake.

Donovan knows of another account that started as a celebrity gossip profile before changing to political disinformation closer to the 2016 election.

4. When in doubt, dig a little deeper.

If you're still not sure, Donovan says you can use the Wayback machine to see if the account has changed personas in the past.

You can also download the avatar or the banner image on the social media accounts and do a reverse image search to see if the picture shows up elsewhere or if it's real.

If you still can't tell if an account is real, don't follow them.

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5. If you make a mistake, correct it.

"If we do spread something wrong, don't just delete it," says Starbird. "Actually go back and let everyone know who might have reshared your post that it was actually wrong. If it's Facebook, actually edit the post and say this is wrong. Let people know that we've made a mistake."

"Journalists have these standards of fact-checking," she continues. "Well, we're all talking about being citizen journalists now, so now we have to take on some of that responsibility if we want to have the privilege."

6. Use the 'flag' tool.

If you think you've found a fake account or you're seeing dangerous, false information online, flag it.

This is safer than trying to dispel information on your own. "If it's a serious disinformation campaign, groups of people who want to remain online will attack you in order to try to shut you down personally," says Donovan.

7. Protect your personal data while you browse online.

If a disinformer is using advertising technology to target you, using a browser that has privacy controls to limit the amount of information collected about you might help. Mozilla, for example, protects users' data by turning on privacy features by default in the Firefox browser and using the Enhanced Tracking Protection feature to prevent known parties from tracking your activity from the sites you visit, therefore limiting their ability to build a profile of you.

You can also use private browsing or incognito mode to clear cookies and your cache.

8. Remember that we all have an important role to play in stopping the spread of disinformation.

"We sometimes have this idea, just like with voting, that we're too small," says Starbird. "'Nothing I do is going to make a big impact, and yet at scale, absolutely it does. Misinformation doesn't spread itself. We spread it, as information participants."

"There is a well-founded fear that pervasive disinformation is undermining our trust in information systems, our trust in our democratic election systems and our trust in each other," she continues. "That can undermine democratic society because if we can't come together with some kind of shared reality and an acceptance of others in our country as legitimate political actors, then we can't come together to govern ourselves. In those conditions, democracy falls apart."

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