Concerned by the increasing number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients arriving at his hospital, the French doctor took to Facebook and posted a video imploring people to be vaccinated.
He was quickly bombarded with dozens, then hundreds, and ultimately over 1,000 angry letters from the anti-vaccine extremist organisation V V. The organisation has harassed physicians and public health officials, destroyed government offices, and attempted to interrupt immunisation clinics in France and Italy.
Concerned about the exploitation of its platform, Facebook deactivated many accounts associated with the organisation in December. But that hasn’t stopped V V from using Facebook and other forums and, like many anti-vaccine groups throughout the world, has expanded its portfolio to include climate change denial and anti-democratic propaganda.
“Let’s go and get them at home, they don’t have to sleep anymore,” reads one post from the group. “Fight with us!” reads another.
The largely unregulated nature of the attacks against the vaccine’s undeniable health advantages illustrate the evident limits of a social media company’s ability to resist even the most harmful sort of disinformation, especially without a prolonged concerted effort.
Researchers at Reset, a group located in the United Kingdom, discovered almost 15,000 abusive or misinformation-laden Facebook postings from V V, with activity peaking in spring 2022, months after the site revealed its steps against the organisation. Reset’s researchers stated in a study on V V’s actions that its prolonged existence on Facebook raises “issues regarding the effectiveness and consistency of Meta’s self-reported intervention.”
In response, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, stated that their 2021 measures were never intended to remove all V V material, but rather to remove accounts determined to be involved in concerted abuse. Following notification from The Associated Press of the group’s persistent actions on its platform, Facebook said it terminated a further 100 accounts this week.
Meta stated that it is attempting to strike a balance between eliminating content from groups like V V that obviously violates harassment or harmful disinformation policies while not silencing innocent users. This can be especially challenging when it comes to the sensitive subject of immunizations.
“This is a highly adversarial space and our efforts are ongoing: since our initial takedown, we’ve taken numerous actions against this network’s attempts to come back,” a Meta spokesman told.
image credits: wikipedia commons
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