Can WhatsApp benefit from fact-checked stories & Facebook's election test in Myanmar
Welcome to The Checklist! This week we have updates and expectations on how platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook can address misinformation more effectively. Myanmar's general elections scheduled for November 8 will be a test for Facebook's efforts to control hate speech and misinformation that can impact the electoral process in the country In this issue we also have your regularly scheduled round up of COVID-19 highlights and updates from Meedan.
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Your COVID-19 questions
Journalist and medical doctor, Dr. Seema Yasmin shares weekly highlights from Meedan's public health journalism tool, learnaboutcovid19.org.
What short and long-term effects does COVID-19 have on other body parts, including lungs, brain, heart and kidneys?
Dr. Seema says: "Beyond the grief of lost lives and the mourning of loved ones, Covid-19 can present a burden to survivors. In a July research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Italian scientists shared the aftermath of Italy’s Covid-19 crisis: among one group of previously hospitalized patients, nearly 90% had at least one persistent symptom more than a month after returning home. A German study found that 78 of 100 Covid-19 patients suffered heart problems that had the potential to cause longer-term scarring and inflammation. In other parts of the world, a group of patients known as Covid long-haulers say they feel tired, weak, anxious, and still suffer chest symptoms, two or even three and four months after they first fell ill. Scientists studying the long-term impacts of the new coronavirus are documenting its effects on the brain, lungs, hearts, and other organs, and learning that recovery can be a long journey; one that does not necessarily end when a person is sent home from hospital. A long period of illness can affect people who were severely ill as well as those whose symptoms were classified as mild." (Read more on what our our experts say here)
What are virus shut-out masks?
Dr. Seema says: "As the virus spreads and some government responses continue to fall short, and PPE supply chains remain challenged, a spate of face masks and Covid-19-related products have appeared on the market. Many of these products make claims about “anti-viral” and “virus shut-out” properties but not all have been safety-tested. One such product is a “virus shut-out tag,” a kind of necklace said to contain chemicals that protect the wearer from infection with SARS-CoV-2. These claims are unscientific and have the potential to harm wearers who assume protection and therefore choose not to wear masks or behave in a way that protects them from exposure. Government authorities have spoken out against the bogus claims made by various manufacturers, but they—and social media platforms—have done little to protect the public from these products. While that remains the case, the onus is on the public to assess the veracity of claims made by manufacturers." (Read more on what our our experts say here)
How does the immune system work to fight COVID-19?
Dr. Seema says: "The immune system’s reaction to the new coronavirus has become politicized, with some pushing an overly hopeful interpretation of scientific data in attempts to drive school and business reopenings; while some news outlets have misinterpreted data on antibodies and presented a dismal picture of immunity. Studies published in July and August show antibodies—small proteins made by the immune system to fight infection—persist for at least three months after symptoms begin and decline to a stable nadir after this time. While it’s not known exactly how long antibodies will remain in the body to fight off infection, reports that antibodies disappear after three months were inaccurate. On the other hand, headlines that state “everyone develops long-term coronavirus immunity” misinterpret evidence from studies in which survivors of the 2002-3 SARS epidemic were found to have T cells 17 years after they fell ill. These headlines imply that every single person who is infected with the new virus will have long-term protection from reinfection. But what does long-term mean? While studies on T cells—another arm of the immune system—inspire hope about robust and long-lasting immunity, and more studies show antibodies stick around for longer than previously thought, it’s too soon to say who develops a strong response and how long protection might last." (Read more on what our our experts say here)
Top stories
Can WhatsApp benefit from debunked fact-checked stories to reduce misinformation? (HKS Misinformation Review)
In this paper, using public WhatsApp data from Brazil and India, a team of researchers observes that misinformation has been largely shared on WhatsApp public groups even after they were already fact-checked by popular fact-checking agencies. This represents a significant portion of misinformation spread in both Brazil and India in the groups analyzed. The team posits that such misinformation content could be prevented if WhatsApp had a means to flag already fact-checked content. To this end, the team proposes an architecture that could be implemented by WhatsApp to counter such misinformation. The proposal respects the current end-to-end encryption architecture on WhatsApp, thus protecting users’ privacy while providing an approach to detect the misinformation that benefits from fact-checking efforts.
“We identified images which were fact-checked to be false by popular fact-checking agencies in India and Brazil and analyzed the sharing patterns of these images on public WhatsApp groups. We found that 40.7% and 82.2% of the shares of these misinformation images from Brazil and India respectively, occurred after the images were debunked by fact-checking agencies. This indicates that the fact-checking efforts do not completely stop the spread of misinformation on WhatsApp. This provides an opportunity for WhatsApp to prevent misinformation from being shared on the app by using previously fact-checked data." — Julio C.S. Reis, Philipe Melo, Kiran Garimella, Fabricio Benevenuto
Facebook’s election test (Frontier Myanmar)
All eyes will be on the November US presidential election to judge whether Facebook is doing enough to prevent online disinformation and foreign influence. But November will bring another election that will test the company’s commitments to democracy and human rights. Myanmar is a primary example of how tech companies can fail citizens if they do not act strongly against online hate in conflict-ridden countries.
In its 2018 report, the Independent International Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar stated that “Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate” against the Rohingya. The report recognised that Facebook had tried to respond to misuses of its platform, but found it “slow and ineffective”. Myanmar’s November 8 general elections are thus a new test on the company’s efforts.
"US democracy may again be damaged by manipulative interference in its coming election, but in a fragile democracy such as Myanmar such activities can be fatal to nascent democratic institutions and can contribute to fostering violence again. Although Facebook has increased spending to prevent online manipulation in Myanmar in recent years, we can still see all the enabling elements of a successful electoral manipulation campaign: the coordinated sharing of junk domains, shady pages operated from abroad influencing the political debate, regulation of political ads ignored and a low reach of voices from an incipient civil society. In addition, low digital literacy could be abused to suppress voter turnout or confuse voters." — Eva Gil & Rafael Goldzweig
What’s new at Meedan
Preserving Latin American activist history on social media (Isabella Barroso)
Meedan is leading this project that aims to mobilize the Latin American activist community around the risks related to corporate social media platforms becoming responsible for preserving the history and memory of activist movements, while there is still a total lack of transparency regarding its content moderation policies and private interests.
The objective of every archive should be to share the memory of movements, to create belonging and ties with communities and to save collective history. But, how to ensure that there is a story to tell and study in the future when these records are on private platforms? The idea here is to ensure that memories of resistance are preserved.