COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University
On Facebook, someone I was “friends” with shared a photo comparing wearing masks indoors to the Holocaust. Millions of people murdered because they were Jewish, or the “wrong” race, sexuality, nationality, or of the “wrong” political affiliation. This person compared one of the worst events in human history to… wearing a mask to stop the spread of a deadly disease that has now killed millions worldwide. It was appalling, disgusting, and antisemitic. I couldn’t believe someone I knew could be so horrible. I couldn’t believe Facebook would allow something like that.
However, Facebook doesn’t just allow it, it promotes it. Facebook sold ads with that exact sentiment. They profited from antisemitic hate and disinformation campaigns that have lead to deaths.
Unfortunately, Facebook wasn’t the only company profiting from anti-vaccine and anti-mask content. Anti-vaccine content has run rampant on YouTube for years (though they have taken some measures against it), and Amazon Smile donated over $40,000 to anti-vaccine campaigns in 2020. As for Facebook? They sold ads that compared vaccines to the Holocaust and made hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales to groups with anti-vaccine ads.
When you think the bar has reached as low as it can go, big tech digs a hole.
In This Article:
Cash for Deaths
Exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful. It is disrespectful to victims & a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 30, 2021
A Fox News host said something you likely saw on a Facebook feed multiple times since early 2020. Fox’s Lara Logan compared Dr. Fauci to “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele, who performed medical experiments on and murdered Jewish people during the Holocaust. This for telling people to follow advice so old, you can find it in the Bible: wear masks when you go out and isolate. It’s literally advice given in one of the oldest books in the Bible. With the advancements of vaccines to help our immune systems get a head start on fighting illness, we’ve added that to the suggestions. Protect yourself and others by getting vaccinated and wearing a mask. It’s that simple. Yet here we are, fighting misinformation that most closely falls along party lines.
Facebook’s Anti-Vax Ad Selling
Facebook made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling ads to anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-measures pages. You know what? I’m going to just call that, “pro-COVID.” Really doesn’t make sense to list out, “masks, vaccines, distancing, small gatherings, limiting travel, and basic human decency” every time we have to discuss something they’re “anti.”
Pro-COVID ads ran on Facebook, spreading misinformation Facebook claims to fight. Some ads compared anti-COVID measures, like masks, distancing, and vaccines, to living in Nazi Germany. One read, “I’m originally from America but I currently reside in 1941 Germany.” A group known as “Ride the Red Wave” published an ad for t-shirts reading, “Make hanging traitors great again.” After the coup attempt that did include a noose, that’s not an idle threat. Surely Facebook banned them for it, right? Nope. They let Ride the Red Wave run an ad claiming vaccines were an attempt to cull the population.
Why would Facebook allow ads calling for violence and misinformation? Perhaps it’s because, according to CNN’s data, Facebook made $280,000 from Ride the Red Wave since May. Facebook’s decision not to ban violent speech and misinformation from their ad network likely has something to do with the potential half a million they can collect from just one of these groups a year. This wasn’t the only one, another group with anti-vaccine messaging bought $500,000 in ads.
Facebook’s content with spreading death, as long as it’s profitable. And, wow, is it profitable. Why else do you think these groups are spending so much to advertise their pro-COVID products? You don’t spend $500,000 without expecting much more in return.
Amazon’s Donations
If you use Amazon, you should be using smile.amazon.com. This donates a tiny portion of your purchases (0.5%) to a charity of your choosing. However, Amazon isn’t as picky about the charities they allows on their service as they should be. They claim they don’t allow hate groups, but have allowed donations to anti-LGBTQ groups and groups with anti-LGBTQ policies. Amazon has also fed the COVID-19 pandemic, by providing gullible shoppers with misinformation on products and funding pro-COVID “charities” through their Amazon Smile program. In fact, in 2020 alone, they raised $40k in pro-COVID funds.
Within the course of several years, Amazon also donated $41k to the National Vaccine Information Center. Despite its name, it’s actually an anti-vaccination group. It’s the nation’s largest spreader of vaccine misinformation. The anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defence received over $10,000, and other poorly-named groups like Physicians for Informed Concent and Consent Action Network received around $3,000 each.
“Beyond the money, it has a lot of power because a powerful organization like Amazon is essentially endorsing them.”
-Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine
Misinformation for Sale
A search for “vaccine” on Amazon will give you anti-vaccine books and products like herbal supplements. Without studies to back them up, these will make claims not approved by the FDA. Amazon will sell foolish shoppers anti-vaccine shirts and paraphernalia as well. It’s made worse by Amazon’s suggestion engine, which, like a social network, will feed users anti-vaccine misinformation after they research the topic once.
Vaccine misinformation, especially now during the now two year long COVID-19 pandemic, is deadly. Since it began, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed over 5 million people worldwide, with over 816,000 of those deaths coming from the United States alone, where misinformation about vaccines and masking spread and became a political stance. Pro-COVID measures are killing people in one of the largest worldwide mass death events in recent history. Amazon, however, has also decided to continue contributing to the carnage.
“We respect that our customers have a wide variety of viewpoints on this matter, which is why the charities in question continue to be included in the list of organizations customers can choose from as part of AmazonSmile.”
– Stacey Keller, Amazon Spokesperson
A Little Goes a Long Way
On a grand scale, $40,000 from Amazon may not seem like a lot. Especially when Facebook’s selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ads, raking in billions every year. However, with social media, it only takes a little boost to spread misinformation extremely far. Targeting the most frequent shares of misinformation is easy. After that, they do the rest of the work. Someone who spends their days spreading pro-COVID messages and memes will share an ad they see without thinking.
After all, if they were thinking, they wouldn’t be spreading pro-COVID memes. Perhaps they want their obituary to get its 15 seconds of fame on the Herman Cain Award subreddit.
Nothing Illegal Here
Over 816,000 Americans are dead from COVID-19 as of this writing. It seems like just yesterday we crossed the 800k threshold. Nearly every COVID-related death in 2021 could have been prevented with vaccines. However, due to misinformation, hundreds of thousands of people died senselessly because they refused to get the vaccine. Many others may face disabilities lasting months, years, or potentially forever. More people died from COVID-19 in 2021 than 2020, despite a vaccine that can prevent serious cases, hospitalization, and death. Any vaccine misinformation contributes to those deaths.
Despite misinformation being a leading cause of death in 2020 and especially 2021, there’s nothing illegal about Facebook and Amazon’s actions. They can profit from merchants who themselves profit from a misinformed (and dying) public. At this point, we should consider willfully spreading this misinformation as negligent homicide. The connection between misinformation and death is so tight, it’s just shy of motive.
Vaccines, even in the most vulnerable Americans, those 75 years old or older, prevent hospitalization from COVID-19 in over 90% of cases on average. Unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die than vaccinated people. That’s 1,100%. Vaccines save lives, not only by keeping you from getting sick, but also, even once those antibodies wane, by ensuring that any case you do get is mild. They reduce the time you can spread COVID, and help reduce infections. The vaccines are safe and incredibly effective. Any information suggesting otherwise is false, based not on science but often on greedy motivations, either political or profitable (or both). Misinformation is killing people, and we have to put a stop to it.
Sources:
- Oliver Darcy, CNN Business
- Jay Greene and Jeremy B. Merrill, The Washington Post
- Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information
- Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Business
- Melody Schreiber, The Guardian