Facebook and YouTube to fight sensational and misleading health claims

Medically unverified health claims, such as the life-saving abilities of turmeric, alkaline water, or a nightshade-free diet, flourish on Facebook and YouTube. That’s a problem, especially when it leads people to spurn medical treatment in favor of the alternative remedies touted on social media — to the detriment of their health, and often their finances.

Facebook announced Tuesday that it had begun combatting the spread of “sensational health claims” on the platform in June. Apparently, the announcement came in response to inquiries from the Wall Street Journal, regarding the paper’s investigation (also published Tuesday), about how “bogus cancer treatment claims” proliferate on Facebook and YouTube. 

“In order to help people get accurate health information and the support they need, it’s imperative that we minimize health content that is sensational or misleading,” Facebook’s blog post announcing the change reads. 

These “remedies” can run the gamut from harmlessly useless to potentially life threatening. Many naturopath pages boast the benefits of certain foods to prevent cancer. Other pages claim you can actually treat cancer with the likes of baking soda injections. Some even sell treatments, which the Journal reports have driven cancer patients into debt, as well as caused them to turn away from medical treatments like chemotherapy.

Facebook is addressing this content by limiting its reach, as opposed to banning or removing it outright. That means that it is identifying posts that either make sensational health claims, or posts trying to sell products based on a health claim, by finding the common phrases associated with that type of content. Then, it made a “ranking update” to stymie the distribution of these posts in users’ News Feeds. The method is similar to how it treated “clickbait” content from publishers. 

YouTube has also made some changes in response to the Journal investigation. A spokesman told the Journal that it was removing advertising on “bogus cancer treatment channels.” According to the investigation, ads for legitimate pharmaceutical companies appeared on channels that touted, for example, ways to treat cancer with diet. Like Facebook, YouTube is limiting the reach of these videos – recommending them to other users less often – rather than removing them or banning them outright.

But the problem is diffuse. One of the challenges, as the Journal notes, is that bogus health information often appears alongside pages, content, or ads with legitimate health info. Differentiating between legitimate and untrustworthy sources of information has long been a problem on social platforms, where misinformation is widespread and everything looks similar. 

Bogus information also often spreads within Groups, which Facebook has been encouraging the adoption of. Curbing distribution in the News Feed will keep something from going viral, but the effects will be limited.

It’s also not clear exactly what counts as misleading health information. Baking soda injects for cancer treatment are obviously fraudulent, but much of the spectrum of “wellness” content could be said to fall under this grey area.

For example, picture-perfect posts extolling the virtues of “clean eating” are ubiquitous on Instagram. While not in same league as dangerous “cures” for autism, there are food-safety risks associated with meal prep and potentially harm from products like weight loss teas. Searching “cancer treatments” on Instagram reveals mostly images and videos of people documenting their battles against cancer with chemo. But there are multiple hashtags related to “alternative cancer treatments” that peddle conspiracy theories and natural remedies alike – and the recent algorithm changes wouldn’t affect the existence of these posts on any platform.

Facebook told Mashable that it is working to stop the spread of low-quality content and misinformation on Instagram on the Explore and recommended hashtag portions of the platform. That seems to be part of a larger effort that the company announced in April. But Facebook did not specify whether it is going after bogus health info, specifically, on Instagram.

Scientifically unsound “health” treatments are just one part of the misinformation puzzle that Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks are trying to solve. Recent investigations have revealed how conspiracy theories about vaccines — particularly in Facebook groups — could be contributing to a decline in vaccinations and a rise measles outbreaks. These companies are also tackling political misinformation campaigns, the spreading of false news, misleading doctored photos and videos, and more.

Somewhat obviously, Facebook said pages that post sensational health information will be affected by lowered reach and distribution. The solution? Don’t post the click-baity miracle cure, anti-medical content in the first place.