The administrators of the social media website Reddit rebuffed the members of dozens of communities last week, dismissing concerns of misinformation spreading largely unchecked.
While many readers of Passport may be more familiar with Reddit for the role of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets in the meme stock craze (featuring such favorites as GameStop (NYSE: GME) and AMC (NYSE: AMC)), the website has made headlines once more for a site-wide protest started by the moderators of r/vaxxhappened.
While r/vaxxhappened was founded well before the novel Coronavirus first struck China, the community quickly picked up in traffic as misinformation regarding the efforts to develop and deploy a COVID-19 vaccine exploded amid the onset of the pandemic. Reddit, however, played host to an increasing amount of misinformation, proliferated by subreddits such as the now-banned r/The_Donald.
In response to the growing spread of misinformation on the site, the users of over 1500 subreddits, led by r/vaxxhappened, petitioned the site's administrators through a massive site-wide posting, hoping for a response.
Unfortunately for users of the site, in a manner broadly consistent with the dismissive tone tech giants have taken on the issue so far, the site's owners and administrators essentially waved off concerns, claiming "Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy."
Users, however, have largely rejected the site's decision.
"This statement from the admins is hypocritical, dishonest, and misrepresentative of the situation on their site. They are portraying the misinformation as simply discussion that criticises the majority opinion, when it is far more than that: It is discussion that actively advises against government guidelines, opting to follow disproven studies and anecdotal evidence. As stated in our original letter, this type of misinformation is dangerous. The admins are pretending like it is not," r/vaxxhappened moderator u/maybesaydie wrote in response.
However, users of the site are planning to continue efforts to combat misinformation through the use of the website's existing content moderation system.
So far, tech firms have done very little to combat the explosive spread of misinformation on their platforms, pandemic-related or otherwise. Some efforts have been undertaken by YouTube (parent company Alphabet, (NASDAQ: GOOGL)), Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), and Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR), but such efforts have done little to stymie the spread of misleading claims. The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and the deeply polarized 2020 election have remained heated topics of partisan debate and have been the topics of a great deal of misinformation and controversy.