Big tech companies are being confronted with the swift spread of online misinformation about the coronavirus—from dangerous health advice to racist conspiracies to scammy products—and the industry has launched what looks like all-out war to fight it. It’s a high-stakes test case for defense operations at companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and experts say their efforts appear more aggressive than any previous crackdown on false and misleading information.
The push shows how much the platforms can do when they pull out all the stops, according to scholars who study the subject—going far beyond their efforts leading up to the 2016 election, when political misinformation became a prominent issue, and in the years since. But it also reveals some inherent limitations to fighting bad information, even with Big Tech’s vast resources.
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