The COVID-19 pandemic has forced social media companies to take a more active stance against disinformation. The most striking recent example came on March 31, when Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all banned videos from Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. These videos featured Bolsonaro advising the use of an antimalarial, chloroquine, to treat the novel coronavirus. Charlie…
There is no dignified way of putting it — the world has gone bananas as the COVID-19 pandemic rages. When the threat of deadly infection is mixed with the peculiar rush of going viral, people are bound to spread fakes. Even those of us who mean well. Many Bellingcat team members are impacted by this…
Besides viruses, what else is terribly contagious? Lies, of course. As the coronavirus pandemic engulfs the world, disinformation associated with the virus has taken on many forms. Whether it’s your uncle sending you a Tom Hanks meme at 4 a.m. or the current occupant of the White House lying about Barack Obama supposedly harming the…
On March 16th, 2020, virtually every major social media company released a joint statement on their efforts to curb the spread of disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. As of the writing of this article, the top comment on Facebook’s Twitter post of this statement is, itself, a piece of disinformation, furthering the conspiracy theory that…
