John Oliver takes an eye-opening look at the way misinformation spreads online
Published
Oct 11 2021 at 9:59 AM GMT
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- John Oliver has covered the topic of misinformation plenty of times before on Last Week Tonight, from vaccine myths to coronavirus conspiracies — and on Sunday, he returned to it once again.
- This time the focus was the spread of misinformation among non-English speaking communities, something spotlighted recently by the revelation of how little time Facebook spends moderating content outside the U SOier went on to break down examples of misinformation in diaspora communities, from Vietnamese Americans turning to YouTube due to a lack of credible news sources airing in Vietnamese, to the memes spreading on private messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat.
- A key problem right now is that many communities don't have the same fact-checking resources that English-speaking ones do," Oliver concluded.
- Beyond that, there needs to be public pressure on platforms to do something about all forms of misinformation, whether they are in English or not.
- Oh, and in case anyone needs a shorthand way of telling a relative that they just shared some misinformation, Oliver's team also came up with a collection of "Good Morning"-style memes and videos with a twist, all of which are free to download now.
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- Published Oct 11, 2021 9:59 AM GMT