Screenshot: Can social media win the anti-vax war?
A weekly column from City A.M. bringing you all the biggest stories and trends in technology, media and telecoms
This week
**Media Moment of the Week: A very British scandal
**Social media gears up for the vaccine information war
**How data dominates financial markets
Media Moment of the Week
It was quite possibly the most painfully British media storm of all time. On Sunday, culture secretary Oliver Dowden had the bright idea of suggesting that Netflix should carry a disclaimer on its hit series The Crown because he worried viewers may mistake fiction for fact.
The ensuing row encapsulated every tired corner of the culture wars, and while arguably bigger issues (such as the global pandemic) ploughed on obliviously, the British media spent an entire week churning out news stories and breathless comment pieces analysing the notion that TV dramas might not be entirely accurate. Now I’m writing about it as well. Nice work, secretary of state.
Can social media win the anti-vax war?
In a world worn down by bad news, the revelation that the UK had approved a Covid-19 vaccine came as something of a shock. We allowed ourselves a few hours to bask in the positivity of it all before, inevitably, the mood was soured. Within hours of the announcement, Thalidomide was trending on Twitter, as tin hat tools conjured up nonsensical links between Pzifer’s vaccine efforts and the disastrous morning sickness drug.
It was an immediate flavour of the battle to come. While the vaccine spells a possible end to the pandemic, ministers are increasingly worried that mass inoculation efforts will be derailed by anti-vax conspiracy theories, most of which are spread online.
For their part, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Tiktok all insist they can stamp out vaccine misinformation. Last month they agreed a package of measures with the government, including a pledge not to profit from anti-vax content. But grand gestures aside, serious questions remain about whether they’re up for the job.
For a start, they’re fighting a war on multiple fronts. Anti-vax theories range from concerns about health defects to accusations of state control and a Big Pharma conspiracy. Then there’s the sheer quantity of posts. Recent research by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found that the largest 147 anti-vax accounts have 49m followers — up by a fifth since last year. Given the scale of the problem, trying to police misinformation feels like a rather sombre game of whack-a-mole.
As a result, the platforms are having to be selective in their efforts. Twitter says it’s prioritising “coordinated and manipulated behaviour”, such as a Russian campaign that claimed the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine would turn people into chimpanzees. It will also remove posts that contain a call to action. This week’s Thalidomide posts, it decided, were not against its policies. Facebook appears to be taking more of a blanket approach. The company has vowed to remove all false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccines, but admitted it can’t start enforcing these policies overnight.
As a result, the platforms are trying to promote information from authoritative sources, such as the World Health Organization. This is undoubtedly important, but it’s the easy way out, and fails to tackle the issue head on. Conspiracy theories, by their very nature, shun information from official sources. Moreover, many of the offending posts are being spread in closed groups or passed from individual to individual through messages.
So the question now is whether social media can do enough to tackle this problem. It is, of course, impossible to fully quash conspiracy theories. Instead, the challenge will be to prevent anti-vax theories from ballooning into a mainstream belief. Scientists say around 70 per cent of the UK population needs to be vaccinated to fully stamp out the virus. Recent polling suggests that while just two per cent of Brits are anti-vaxxers, 20 per cent are hesitant to take the vaccine for other reasons. That doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvre.
Social media is no stranger to misinformation. It’s not even the first time conspiracy theories have reared their ugly head during the pandemic (remember the 5G claims?). But in anti-vaxxers, social media firms are squaring up to a movement that was around long before Covid-19 and has far greater implications for public health. With regulation on the horizon, the vaccine information war is likely to be their greatest test yet.
How data dominates financial markets
The biggest deal of 2020 may not be a glamorous one, but there’s no doubting its significance. When S&P 500 this week said it had agreed to buy IHS Markit in an all-stock transaction worth $44bn, it laid bare the significance of data to global financial markets.
This should hardly come as a surprise in the modern world. Data is the commodity that finances Big Tech and drives the way many of the biggest companies do business. But the mammoth merger between ratings giant S&P and IHS Markit reflects just how highly market data is now valued, and how much competition is heating up.
London Stock Exchange fired the starting pistol last year with its $27bn takeover of Refinitiv — the data behemoth spun off from Thomson Reuters two years ago. Now S&P is set to become a major player in the field. Both will be looking to challenge the dominance of Bloomberg, which charges $24,000 per year for a single subscription to its terminal software system.
The reasoning is straightforward. While information has always been gold dust to traders, the surge in new data and analytic capabilities, fuelled by the rise of artificial intelligence, gives ever greater ways for financial institutions to get ahead. For data providers, it’s also a question of scale. The sheer range of data available is putting downward pressure on prices, meaning they need to build up their offering to stay ahead.
LSE is still awaiting the green light from regulators in Brussels, and S&P’s planned deal will likely also attract scrutiny. Many of the antitrust concerns levelled at tech giants such as Google will also be applied to these companies — with control over so much data, could they use their market power to shut out rivals? But regulatory concerns aside, the deals are set to usher in a new era for financial services, where data is the name of the game.
The algorithm recommends:
- Facebook has agreed to license some articles from news publishers. It’s been a long time coming and looks suspiciously like an effort to stave off regulation. Even so, it’s a major boost for UK media outlets, which could earn millions from the deal.
- London’s live music sector has been ravaged by the pandemic. Good news, then, that the £1.3bn revamp of Olympia will include a new 4,400-capacity venue.
Got a story? Drop me a line at james.warrington@cityam.com or on Twitter