Below are the citation, selected extracts, and a comment from me.
CITATION: Editorial: Twitter, public health, and misinformation
The Lancet Digital Health
Open Access Published:May 11, 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(23)00096-1
SELECTED EXTRACTS
Over the past few months, Twitter has rolled out its new subscription-based verification services, Verified Organizations and an updated version of Twitter Blue. Many legacy verified accounts have since lost their blue tick, including The Lancet journals. These paid-for services could drive the spread of health misinformation through a rise in the verification of malicious accounts and reduced visibility of bonafide public health experts and groups who opt not to (or cannot afford to) subscribe. The concerns are not unfounded, particularly given the positive relationship between account verification and the number of likes and retweets the account's tweets receive. This is particularly worrying because Twitter content might be used to train a new large language model to rival ChatGPT. Twitter is an easy and fast way to disseminate crucial health information at scale, but does its evolving policies make it too difficult for users to know who to trust?
A hotly debated method to bolster public trust is to better regulate the social media industry...
Given their role as a commercial determinant of health and the dangers of misinformation, more stringent, globally cohesive regulation of the social media industry is needed to reduce harms and maintain public trust. A report by Economist Impact, supported by Elsevier, also proposes that the research community collaborates with the industry and policy makers to develop more effective strategies to minimise the spread of misinformation, and conducts research on social media use amongst the community to identify elements that have been most beneficial to countering misinformation. More data are also needed on the consequences of online misinformation and social media policies and practices on public health, to better inform these strategies...
COMMENT (NPW): The World Medical Association Statement on Healthcare Information For All (2019) includes the following recommendation: "Promote standards of good practice and ethics to be met by information providers" Standards of practice are especially important with huge global information networks such as Twitter. Furthermore, as shown by HIFA in their white paper with the New York Law School, governments have a legal obligation under international human rights law to promote reliable health information and protect from misinformation. Governments could and should be doing more individually and collectively to reduce public health harms due to social media content.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
