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I Googled to see if Maria Von Trapp remarried after Georg died. The result was horrifying.

Having blatantly false information as the top search result is actually a huge problem for us all.

Photo credit: Canva

Google's AI Overview sometimes gets basic facts wrong.

With AI being implemented seemingly everywhere for seemingly everything these days, it wasn't surprising when Google launched its "AI Overview" in the spring of 2024. With messaging like "Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you" and "Find what you're looking for faster and easier with AI overviews in search results," the expectation is that AI will parse through the search results for you and synopsize the answer.

That sounds great. The problem is, its synopsis is too often entirely wrong. We're not talking just a little misleading or incomplete, but blatantly, factually false. Let me show you an example.

I recently wrote an article about the real-life love story between Maria and Georg Von Trapp, and as part of my research, I found out Georg died 20 years after they married. I hadn't seen anything about Maria remarrying, so I Googled whether she had. Here's what the AI Overview said when I searched last week:

maria von trapp, ai overview results, false information, ai, Internet This is what Google AI Overview said when I asked how many times Maria Von Trapp had been married. It's wrong.Screenshot via Google

"Maria Von Trapp married twice. First, she married Georg Von Trapp in 1927 and they had 10 children together. After Georg's death, she married Hugh David Campbell in 1954 and had 7 daughters with him. Later, she also married Lynne Peterson in 1969 and had one son and daughter with him."

Something about that didn't add up—and it wasn't just how it said she married twice but then listed three spouses. Maria Von Trapp was born in 1905, so according to the AI Overview, she remarried at 49 years old and had seven more children, and then married again at 64 years old and had another two children. That seems…unlikely.

old woman, elderly, golden girls, women, gif Did Maria Von Trapp have two children in her mid-60s? No. Giphy

So I clicked the link icon on the AI Overview, which took me to the Maria Von Trapp Wikipedia page. On that page, I found a chart where the extra two spouses were listed—but they very clearly weren't hers. Hugh David Campbell was the husband of one of her daughters. Lynn Peterson was the wife of one of her sons.

The fact is that Maria never remarried after Georg died. If I had just run with the AI Overview, I would have gotten it this very basic fact about her life completely wrong. And it's not like it pulled that information from a source that got it wrong. Wikipedia had it right. The AI Overview extrapolated the real information incorrectly.

Ironically, when I Googled "Did Maria Von Trapp remarry after Georg died?" in the middle of writing this article to see if the same result came back, the AI Overview got it right, citing the Upworthy article I wrote. (Yes, I laughed out loud.)

maria von trapp, ai overview results, false information, media, literacy After my article was published, the AI Overview cited it while giving the correct answer.Screenshot via Google

This may seem like a lot of fuss over something inconsequential in the big picture, but Maria Von Trapp's marital status is not the only wrong result I've seen in Google's AI Overview. I once searched for the cast of a specific movie and the AI Overview included a famous actor's name that I knew for 100% certain was not in the film. I've asked it for quotes about certain subjects and found quotes that were completely made up.

Are these world-changing questions? No. Does that matter? No.

facts matter, misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, AI Facts should matter no matter what they are. Giphy GIF by Angie Tribeca

Objective facts are objective facts. If the AI Overview so egregiously messes up the facts about something that's easily verifiable, how can it be relied on for anything else? Since its launch, Google has had to fix major errors, like when it responded to the query "How many Muslim presidents has the U.S. had?" with the very wrong answer that Barack Obama had been our first Muslim president.

Some people have "tricked" Google's AI into giving ridiculous answers by simply asking it ridiculous questions, like "How many rocks should I eat?" but that's a much smaller part of the problem. Most of us have come to rely on basic, normal, run-of-the-mill searches on Google for all kinds of information. Google is, by far, the most used search engine, with 79% of the search engine market share worldwide as of March 2025. The most relied upon search tool should have reliable search results, don't you think?

Even the Google AI Overview itself says it's not reliable:

ai overview results, false information, google reliability, AI, misinformation Google's AI Overview doesn't even trust itself to be accurate.Screenshot via Google

As much as I appreciate how useful Google's search engine has been over the years, launching an AI feature that might just make things up and put them them at the top of the search results feels incredibly irresponsible. And the fact that it still spits out completely (yet unpredictably) false results about objectively factual information over a year later is unforgivable, in my opinion.

We're living in an era where people are divided not only by political ideologies but by our very perceptions of reality. Misinformation has been weaponized more and more over the past decade, and as a result, we often can't even agree on the basic facts much less complex ideas. As the public's trust in expertise, institutions, legacy media, and fact-checking has dwindled, people have turned to alternative sources to get information. Unfortunately, those sources come with varying levels of bias and reliability, and our society and democracy are suffering because of it. Having Google spitting out false search results at random is not helpful on that front.

— (@)

AI has its place, but this isn't it. My fear is that far too many people assume the AI Overview is correct without double-checking its sources. And if people have to double-check it anyway, the thing is of no real use—just have Google give links to the sources like they used to and end this bizarre experiment with technology that simply isn't ready for its intended use.

This article originally appeared in June.

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technology

Learning

A simple historical fact explains why boomers are more likely to fall for misinformation

There's more to the generational divide than age.

Photo credit: Canva

There's a simple historical reason boomers are more likely to believe misinformation

It never fails, you're sitting there trying to get through a day in the office without freaking out over the office lunch thief when your phone screen lights up. A message from your mother or grandmother appears. There's no context to the message, it's just a link to an article about grocery stores requiring passports to enter. You don't even bother clicking on the story before quickly typing back, "it's fake, mom" then continuing on with your day.

The short response isn't because you're being flippant but because as a Millennial, you've become used to filtering false stories from your boomer relatives. Of course you know your well meaning relatives are intelligent in so many areas but you can't figure out why they don't recognize sketchy websites or obviously made up stories. There's actually a really simple reason that this may be happening, specifically when it comes to the boomer generation.

boomers; Millennials; Gen Z; Gen X; boomer misinformation; misinformation; the fairness doctrine; FCC; fake news; propaganda Exploring the world from home with headphones and a map.Photo credit: Canva

They never had to learn to fact check, thanks to the Mayflower and Fairness Doctrine. Not only did they not need to fact check news sources, they didn't have to critically think about the information that was presented to them when it came from places of authority. This isn't because they were blindly trusting. It's because the information provided by news stations or radio broadcasts no matter how controversial were not allowed to contain any bias or misinformation. They could literally trust everything a newscaster said.

That type of fair and unbiased news reporting was the result of an FCC ruling called the Mayflower Decision (also known as the Mayflower Doctrine) that preceded the Fairness Doctrine. In 1938 a former Yankee's employee Lawrence J. Flynn accused two radio stations of airing one-sided political views, editorials and attacks against politicians the owner of the network didn't like.

boomers; Millennials; Gen Z; Gen X; boomer misinformation; misinformation; the fairness doctrine; FCC; fake news; propaganda Nostalgic tunes: a moment with the radio.Photo credit: Canva

According to the 1948 Columbia Law Review, due to this kerfuffle, the FCC announced a rule in 1941 that "the radio broadcaster and his station should be allowed neither to editorialize nor take a stand on any controversial matter. This policy appeared as a concomitant to the previously announced position of the Commission that whenever controversial issues were presented they were to be treated impartially and objectively."

In 1949, three years after the first boomers were born, The Fairness Doctrine was passed building from the FCC's guidance on the Mayflower Doctrine. This legislation was meant to break up the monopoly of audience control by ABC, NBC, and CBS with concerns that the news stations could promote extreme bias. It required news outlets, which included radio stations, to provide equal airtime to opposing views. The information needed to be factual in nature without editorializing.

boomers; Millennials; Gen Z; Gen X; boomer misinformation; misinformation; the fairness doctrine; FCC; fake news; propaganda Retro TV broadcast with a vintage vibe.Photo credit: Canva

Doesn't that sound lovely? In a world where every other headline is written to scare the bejesus out of you and news pieces feel more editorialized than factual, having policy in place to tamper it would probably be beneficial. So what happened? Boomers spent all of their childhood, teen years and early adult years never having to question the factuality rating of their news. Then after more than 40 years of television and radio stations having guardrails in place, Ronald Reagan's administration started rolling it back.

According to the Reagan Library FCC Chairman, Mark S. Fowler who was on Reagan's presidential campaign staff, released a report saying, "the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment." By 1987 the doctrine was completely repealed despite the objections from Congress. In an attempt to maintain the law, Congress attempted to codify it with the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987. The bill passed the House and the Senate but Reagan vetoed it and according to the Reagan Library, there were not enough votes to overturn the veto.

boomers; Millennials; Gen Z; Gen X; boomer misinformation; misinformation; the fairness doctrine; FCC; fake news; propaganda President Ronald Reagan sitting with Margaret ThatcherHyper-realistic illustration by: Levan Ramishvili/Flickr

Essentially, from 1941 to 1987, boomers could wholeheartedly trust any news outlet no matter where the news was coming from. By 1988, America had it's first sensationalized news radio show with Rush Limbaugh where wild claims began to fly with no one there to stop it. The removal of the Fairness Doctrine with nothing to replace it left an entire generation at risk of easily falling for misinformation, propaganda and scams.

By this point boomers are parents and Gen X and elder Millennials were in school or heading to school soon. We didn't have any sort of legislation or policy to force news sources to be factual. From the time we reached junior high school, fact checking was part of every day life and we often had to have multiple sources to back up one claim. When the internet became commonplace, we were promptly informed that Wikipedia was not a valid source and learned how to spot suspicious websites. Millennials especially were taught to be skeptical of everything we read online or heard on the news if we couldn't verify it with other sources.

boomers; Millennials; Gen Z; Gen X; boomer misinformation; misinformation; the fairness doctrine; FCC; fake news; propaganda Couple enjoying a cozy TV evening at home.Photo credit: Canva

In addition to learning to identify malicious websites, we were also taught how to spot obvious spin and sensationalism. These are all skills learned during important developmental years. They're even more important skills to have with the meteoric rise in misinformation, propaganda and sensationalism.

These just aren't skills that boomers were taught and by the time they needed them they were deep in the realities of parenthood. Many of them may not have even known there was a shift in policy around factuality in news simply trusting the guy behind the news desk to tell them the truth. While age may be the obvious gap between boomers and Millennials, one generation grew up in a world where news anchors provided facts with no spin. The other grew up with spin everywhere, learning to trust nothing without fact checking.

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boomer misinformation

Education & Information

Debunking doesn't stop misinformation online. But researchers found 'pre-bunking' can.

This approach is more effective than fact-checking.

Photo credit: Canva

Some helpful information to fight misinformation.

The rise of misinformation on social media has been a monumental stress test for the world’s critical thinking skills. Misinformation has had a huge influence on elections, public health and the treatment of immigrants and refugees across the world. Social media platforms have tried to combat false claims over the years by employing fact-checkers, but they haven’t been terribly effective because those who are most susceptible to misinformation don’t trust fact-checkers.

“The word fact-checking itself has become politicized,” Cambridge University professor Jon Roozenbeek said, according to the Associated Press. Further, studies show that when people have incorrect beliefs challenged by facts, it makes them cling to their false assumptions even harder. These platforms have also attempted to remove posts containing misinformation that violates their terms of service, but this form of content moderation is often seen as insufficient and is often applied inconsistently.

misinformation, conspiracy theories, tin foil hat, fake news, debunking false information Conspiracy theorists are associated with tin foil hats.via Mattias Berg/Flickr

How do we combat dangerous misinformation online if removing false claims or debunking them hasn’t been effective enough? A 2022 study published in the journal Science Advances by a team of university researchers and Jigsaw, a division of Google, found a relatively simple solution to the problem they call “pre-bunking.”

Pre-bunking is an easy way of inoculating people against misinformation by teaching them some basic critical thinking skills. The strategy is based on inoculation theory, a communication theory that suggests one can build resistance to persuasion by exposing people to arguments against their beliefs beforehand.

— (@)

The researchers learned that pre-bunking was effective after conducting a study on nearly 30,000 participants on YouTube.

“Across seven high-powered preregistered studies including a field experiment on YouTube, with a total of nearly 30,000 participants, we find that watching short inoculation videos improves people’s ability to identify manipulation techniques commonly used in online misinformation, both in a laboratory setting and in a real-world environment where exposure to misinformation is common,” the recently published findings note.

The researchers uploaded videos into YouTube ad slots that discussed different types of manipulative communication used to spread false information such as ad hominem attacks, false dichotomies, scapegoating and incoherence.

Here’s an example of a video about false dichotomies.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Researchers found that after people watched the short videos, they were significantly better at distinguishing false information than they were before. The study was so successful that Jigsaw is looking to create a video about scapegoating and running it in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries are all combating a significant amount of false information about Ukrainian refugees.

Many people talk about "critical thinking," but a lot of people don't really understand what the term means. Learning about the tropes and techniques used to spread misinformation is a vital part of developing critical thinking skills. It's not just about thinking for yourself and determining what's true based on what your brain tells you; it's about recognizing when messaging is being used to manipulate your brain to tell you certain things. It's learning about logical fallacies and how they work. It's acknowledging that we all have biases that can be preyed upon and learning how propaganda techniques are designed to do just that.

There’s an old saying, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach that man to fish and he’ll eat forever.” Pre-bunking does something very similar. We can either play a game of whack-a-mole where social media platforms have to suss out misinformation on a minute-by-minute basis or we can improve the general public’s ability to distinguish misinformation and avoid it themselves.

Further, teaching people to make their own correct decisions about misinformation will be a lot more effective than pulling down content and employing fact-checks. These tactics only drive vulnerable, incredulous people toward misinformation.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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education

Education

Tired of arguing with misinformed people? Experts say there’s an easy way to change their minds.

It turns out we’ve been talking about facts the wrong way.

via Canva/Photos

Two young men arguing.

The downside to living in the Information Age is that we also live in a time when misinformation runs rampant. Studies show that fake news stories spread farther than those that are true, and people tend to believe information because it suits their worldview rather than because it happens to be correct.

It would be fine if most information was about things that are inconsequential in 2024, such as Bigfoot conspiracies or who killed John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, a lot of misinformation affects people’s everyday lives, whether it’s vaccines, technology, or fluoride in our water supply. We saw it happen in real time when misinformation made it very hard for the average person to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it killed millions of people across the world.

That’s why it’s so important for people to respond correctly to misinformation. Knowing how to do so could mean the difference between life and death.

argument, misinformation, news A woman who is confused by conflicting information. via Canva/Photos

A new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that many people have been using ineffective tactics when fighting misinformation. Most people think the best way to counter misinformation is to make a counterargument that refutes the incorrect person’s claim.

For example, if someone says that fluoride in the water supply is a way for companies to dump their toxic waste. Most people would do some Googleing and respond that, actually, that was a conspiracy theory that took hold in post-war Europe. However, researchers note that correcting people is an uphill battle. “People don’t like to be contradicted, and a belief, once accepted, can be difficult to dislodge,” the Annenberg Public Policy Center writes.

What’s the most effective way to counter misinformation?

Researchers suggest a more effective countermeasure to fighting misinformation: “bypassing.”

“Rather than directly addressing the misinformation, this strategy involves offering accurate information that has an implication opposite to that of the misinformation,” the Annenberg Public Policy Center writes. Instead of countering the incorrect opinion on fluoride, you bring up another positive point about fluoride that may cause them to reconsider their beliefs. Simply put, you counter the “negative implication of the misinformation with positive implications, without taking the difficult path of confrontation.”

So, if someone says, “Flouride is toxic waste,” you can respond with, “The Centers for Disease Control says Flouride is one of the 10 Greatest Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century, reducing tooth decay by approximately 25% in children and adults.”

One of the study authors, Granados Samayoa, says that “bypassing can generally be superior to correction, specifically in situations when people are focused on forming beliefs, but not attitudes, about the information they encounter.”

argument, misinformation, news Friends having a friendly debate.via Canva/Photos

What is the ‘backfire effect’?

The “bypass” strategy also makes sense because of the “backfire effect,” a psychological phenomenon that says when people are introduced to credible information that contradicts their firmly held beliefs, they reject it and hold onto their beliefs even more strongly. Considering this, countering someone's misinformation with contradictory evidence may even worsen things for both parties involved.

The good news is that you don’t have to be a super-hero fact-checker to combat the spread of misinformation or have to get in someone’s face and start a heated argument. Using strategies like bypassing, you can help tackle misinformation in a non-confrontational and effective way. It’s all about shifting the conversation and planting a seed of truth that could grow into greater understanding.

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misinformation

Democracy

New website will help you debunk the misinformation you see posted on social media

Your conspiracy-loving uncle is going to hate this.

via Actual Size/Twitter

RumorGuard by The News Literacy Project.

The 2016 election was a watershed moment when misinformation online became a serious problem and had enormous consequences. Even though social media sites have tried to slow the spread of misleading information, it doesn’t show any signs of letting up.

A NewsGuard report from 2020 found that engagement with unreliable sites between 2019 and 2020 doubled over that time period. But we don’t need studies to show that misinformation is a huge problem. The fact that COVID-19 misinformation was such a hindrance to stopping the virus and one-third of American voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen is proof enough.

What’s worse is that according to Pew Research, only 26% of American adults are able to distinguish between fact and opinion.

To help teach Americans how to discern real news from fake news, The News Literacy Project has created a new website called RumorGuard that debunks questionable news stories and teaches people how to become more news literate.

\u201cLove this. We need to make it easy for people to know the difference between what is real and what is misinformation. It\u2019s especially helpful that @NewsLitProject shows the process of how they debunk these rumors.\u201d
— Melissa Luck \u2618 (@Melissa Luck \u2618) 1664976259

“Misinformation is a real threat to our democracy, our health and our environment. But too many people are not sure how to verify the news they come across and are convinced there is no useful action they can take to protect themselves and others from being fooled,” Charles Salter, NLP’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We can confront these challenges by making sure more people have news literacy skills and the ability to collectively push back against the spread of false, misleading and harmful content.”

The site regularly posts debunked news stories to push back against the lies that spread online. The great thing is that the stories explain why the information shouldn’t be trusted.

Each post explains how to use five major factors of credibility to judge whether a claim is legitimate and walks the reader through the debunking process. The five criteria are a great thing to consider any time someone is reading a news article.

Source: Has the information been posted by a credible source?

Evidence: Is there any evidence that proves the claim is true?

Context: Is the provided context accurate?

Reasoning: Is the claim based on sound reasoning?

Authenticity: Is the information authentic, or has it been edited, changed, or completely made up?

The site also provides lessons to teach people how to identify misinformation so they don’t fall for it in the future. Studies show that the best way to combat misinformation is by inoculating people against it by teaching them how to spot the deceptive tactics used by illegitimate news sites.

\u201cFeel empowered \ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udffe\nStop misinformation in its tracks \u274c\nJoin the #RumorGuard today! \n\n\ud83d\udd17 https://t.co/xLs55ws8HJ\u201d
— The News Literacy Project (@The News Literacy Project) 1664974988

A recent study highlighted by Upworthy from researchers from universities of Cambridge and Bristol found that “pre-bunking” was one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of misinformation.

Over the past six years, there have been numerous attempts by social media platforms and fact-checking organizations to try to stop the spread of false information online as it slowly erodes our democracy. RumorGuard seems to be following the lessons we’ve learned over the past few years by providing fact-checks to big news stories in real time and by helping to inoculate people against fake news in the future.

Let’s hope we can stop the spread of misinformation while we still have a democracy to protect.

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misinformation

Culture

The U.S. women's soccer team national anthem controversy isn't at all what you think it is

ESPN/Twitter

Let's start with the facts.

Last night, the U.S. women's soccer team played against Mexico's women's team at a game held in Hartford, Connecticut. Before the match, 98-year-old WWII veteran Pete DuPré played the national anthem on the harmonica. Some of the women on the team turned to face the American flag that was flying at the end of the field during the performance. Some of the women remained facing forward—toward Dupré, the same direction he was facing. All stood silently, some with their hands on their hearts, some with their hands clasped behind their backs.

Those are the facts. Nothing about any of those actions should have been controversial. And yet, we now have countless Americans rooting against the U.S. National Women's Team because they believe some players either turned their back on a veteran or turned their back on the flag.

98-year-old World War II veteran Pete DuPr\u00e9 played the national anthem on a harmonica before the @USWNT\u2019s Olympic send-off match pic.twitter.com/wnrOnZJhkC
— ESPN (@ESPN) 1625520016

The manufactured controversy came swift and hard from the "anti-wokeness" crowd, who boast huge followings on social media. I won't share the posts themselves as I don't think viral lies should get more traffic, but fact-checker Daniel Dale's screenshots offer a taste of the lies being pushed, including from the former Acting Director of U.S. National Intelligence.

This "controversy" about the US Women's National Team was entirely fabricated by right-wing figures. Some of the players turned to face the flag during the anthem (it's located at one end of the stadium), while others looked forward like the veteran who was performing it. (1/3)pic.twitter.com/H0tFVpYZb5
— Daniel Dale (@Daniel Dale) 1625579534

pbs.twimg.com

That's just a small sampling. There are also comments galore on these posts as well as the ESPN post above with people railing against the team, hoping for them to lose, accusing them of disrespecting the country, the flag, and/or the veteran performing.

Athletes have demonstrated during the anthem before, of course, which they have the right to do. But that's not what happened here.

Some of the outlets that ran with the story issued quiet corrections. Some of the influencers who tweeted their outrage added "updates," which most of their followers will never see (instead of just deleting their original tweets and issuing new ones explaining that they were wrong and don't want to be part of spreading misinformation).

U.S. Soccer issued a statement clarifying the situation, which shouldn't have been necessary because we can see with our own eyes what actually happened. And even with the video clearly showing what happened, people are still responding with claims that the players were disrespectful.

Perhaps it's a bit of a Sophie's choice to be presented with a veteran playing the anthem facing one direction and the American flag facing a different direction, but no one can seriously claim that facing either one of them during the anthem is disrespectful.

To be clear, no one turned their back on WWII Veteran Pete DuPr\u00e9 during tonight's anthem. Some USWNT players were simply looking at the flag on a pole in one end of the stadium. The players all love Pete, thanked him individually after the game and signed a ball for him.
— U.S. Soccer Comms (@U.S. Soccer Comms) 1625537684

This is respect. Each and every player waited for their opportunity to come up to Pete post-game before getting on the bus, said hello, thanked him and signed his ball.https://twitter.com/USWNT/status/1412208821783650309\u00a0\u2026
— U.S. Soccer Comms (@U.S. Soccer Comms) 1625538291

It's not the "which way should you face in this situation" that's the real controversy. It's the claim that "they turned away from the flag" or "they turned away from the veteran while he played the anthem," when it's clear that no one actually "turned away" from anything. They were all facing the direction of the veteran to start off with. Some chose to turn toward the flag when the anthem started playing. If you look at the audience in the video, it's the same thing—some people are facing the flag and some are facing the veteran who is performing.

It's just baffling how many people are still claiming that team members were being disrespectful, even in the face of clear video evidence to the contrary. It's like the story they heard and chose to believe got stuck in their brains, making it impossible for them to see anything else.

We can disagree on ideas and ideologies and discuss them all day long, but people can't just create their own reality. I firmly believe that we can sit down and work out—or at least work through—our various perspectives and beliefs when we at least agree on the facts. But we can't debate ideas if they are based on alternate realities that aren't actual realities.

If you tell me "BLM protesters burned Portland, Oregon to the ground!" I don't see how we can discuss racial injustice in a meaningful way, because your belief about the Black Lives Matter movement is not based on fact. If you tell me that the COVID vaccines are more dangerous than COVID, or that they turn you magnetic, or that they contain microchips, then we can't discuss the merits of public health measures because what you believe is objectively, verifiably, indisputably false.

America's biggest problem is not that we lack shared values or that we are divided over ideas, even if we are. The bigger, more dangerous divide is reality vs. unreality and facts vs. "alternative facts." Unfortunately, we have a whole slew of media personalities who excel at using falsehood to manipulate people's outrage and fuel the misinformation machinery that makes them gobs of money. And we have too many people who can't seem to discern a fact from a hole in the ground and who refuse to admit when they get the objective facts wrong.

It's like the old parable of the blind men describing an elephant differently depending on what part of the elephant they're touching. Sharing their various descriptions based on their individual perspectives add up to a fuller picture of reality, right? But what if one of those men insisted that what he's touching isn't actually an elephant, but an ostrich? That person's perspective loses its value immediately. You can't discuss a perspective that's based on a falsehood.

The information age requires digging through muck and mire of misinformation, and we all get it wrong sometimes. But if we don't do the digging for the truth before forming and expressing an opinion and if we don't thoroughly correct our mistakes after the facts are made clear, what are we even doing?

We can deal with different beliefs, we can discuss our diverse opinions, but we can't coexist in separate realities. It just can't work. We have to insist on objective truth as the baseline for everything else, or we'll never be able to discuss our perspectives on reality in a way that might actually move us forward as a society.

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

Canva

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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