Instagram highlights antivaccines in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic

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Content relaying false information about COVID-19 and anti-vaccine ideas abound on social networks, as on Instagram. Worse still, these publications would be highlighted by its algorithm. A study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) which fights online hate, points to the fact that users are naturally directed to questionable content.

The Next Web is relaying the results of this study. The CCDH created fifteen Instagram accounts and each subscribed to different pages. Some followed pages related to health authorities and others were subscribed to anti-tax pages. A third category did not follow either of the two “camps”.

Instagram pushes anti-vaccine content into its discovery section

Every day, the researchers logged into each of the accounts and analyzed the recommended pages, highlighted according to your preferences. It has been found that only accounts according to official authorities did not receive referrals to questionable accounts. Over the two-month experiment, the researchers spotted 104 publications with misinformation. Half of them were related to COVID and five were messing around about vaccines. The accounts were also tricked into following conspiratorial, QAnon, or anti-Semitic content pages.

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Instagram’s algorithm therefore promotes questionable pages, whether or not the user is a follower of these ideas. CCDH wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg calling him to “fix Instagram”. Facebook was quick to respond, saying the study results were no longer up to date as algorithm adjustments have since been made.

However, this is not the opinion of Lee Harpin, one of the authors of the study, who says that the Discovery section still promotes so much inciting content to hatred, screenshot to support. The debate around Instagram’s algorithm is therefore still relevant.