The Disinformation Dozen: 12 people are the source for 65 percent of anti-vaccine propaganda – “In full view of the public on the internet is a small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have their own pockets to line”

By Sheera Frenkel
24 July 2021

SAN FRANCISCO (The New York Times) – The article that appeared online on 9 February 2021 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity, or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”

Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the Disinformation Dozen, a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.” […]

“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its Disinformation Dozen report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House. [more]

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online

The Disinformation Dozen: Why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers

19 March 2021 (CCDH) – We are in the middle of the deadliest US public health crisis in more than a century. Covid-19 has killed more than 500,000 Americans and undermined the livelihood of millions of American workers and families. The virus has had a particularly devastating impact on Black, Latino, and Native American communities, all of whom are suffering severe illness and death from COVID-19 at rates far greater than the general population.¹ Compounding this crisis, vaccination rates in communities of color have also lagged those for whites, and skepticism and distrust of the vaccines are greater in these marginalized communities.²

With widespread distribution of coronavirus vaccines, we have an opportunity to turn a corner on the pandemic. Our recovery depends on the public’s willingness to receive a vaccine. However, researchers are increasingly connecting misinformation disseminated via social media to increased vaccine hesitancy, which will ultimately cause unnecessary deaths.³

Living in full view of the public on the internet are a small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have their own pockets to line, who are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines. According to our recent report, anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers, making these the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers.⁴ Our research has also found anti-vaxxers using social media platforms to target Black Americans, exploiting higher rates of vaccine hesitancy in that community to spread conspiracies and lies about the safety of Covid vaccines.⁵

Facebook, Google, and Twitter have put policies into place to prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation; yet to date, all have failed to satisfactorily enforce those policies. All have been particularly ineffective at removing harmful and dangerous misinformation about coronavirus vaccines, though the scale of misinformation on Facebook, and thus the impact of their failure, is larger. Further, they have all failed to remove the accounts of prominent anti-vaxxers who have repeatedly violated their terms of service, as documented in later sections of this report.

Executive Summary

1. The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about Covid vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months.
2. Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.
3. Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter’s terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform.
4. This is the product of a series of failures from social media platforms:
   1. Research conducted by CCDH last year has shown that platforms fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them.
   1. CCDH’s recent report, Malgorithm, uncovered evidence that Instagram’s algorithm actively recommends similar misinformation.
   1. Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that their total following across platforms now stood at 59.2 million in December, an increase of 877,000 more than they had in June.
   1. CCDH’s ongoing tracking shows that the 20 anti-vaxxers with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total cross-platform following of 59.2 million.
5. Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over 689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.
6. Facebook’s own internal analysis of vaccine hesitant content on its platform is likely to underestimate the influence of leading anti-vaxxers by failing to address the ultimate source of this content, and by the recorded failure of its algorithms to identify content concerning vaccines.
7. Analysis of over 120,000 anti-vaccine tweets collected in the last two months shows that up to 17 percent feature the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.
8. The most effective and efficient way to stop the dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible repeat offenders, who we term the Disinformation Dozen. This should also include the organisations these individuals control or fund, as well as any backup accounts they have established to evade removal.
9. Platforms should establish a clear threshold for enforcement action, such as two strikes, after which restrictions are applied to accounts short of deplaforming them.
10. Users should be presented with warning screens when attempting to follow links to sites known to host vaccine misinformation, and users exposed to posts containing misinformation should be shown effective corrections.
11. Facebook should not allow private and secret anti-vaccine Groups where dangerous anti-vaccine disinformation can be spread with impunity.                                               

The Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of antivaccine content

At the outset of this research, we identified a dozen individuals who appeared to be extremely influential creators of digital anti-vaccine content. These individuals were selected either because they run anti-vaccine social media accounts with large numbers of followers, because they produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or because their growth was accelerating rapidly at the outset of our research in February. Full profiles of each are available at the end of this report.

1. Joseph Mercola
2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
4. Sherri Tenpenny
5. Rizza Islam
6. Rashid Buttar
7. Erin Elizabeth
8. Sayer Ji
9. Kelly Brogan
10. Christiane Northrup
11. Ben Tapper
12. Kevin Jenkins

The Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content

Our analysis of over 812,000 posts extracted from Facebook and Twitter between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

This shows that while many people might spread anti-vaccine content on social media platforms, the content they share often comes from a much more limited range of sources. Exposure to even a small amount of online vaccine misinformation has been shown by the Vaccine Confidence Project to reduce the number of people willing to take a Covid vaccine by up to 8.8 percent.⁶ 

Platforms have failed to act on the Disinformation Dozen

Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter’s terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform.

This is an extension of platforms’ failure to act on vaccine misinformation. Research conducted by CCDH last year has shown that platforms fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them, and we have uncovered evidence that Instagram’s algorithm actively recommends similar misinformation.⁷

Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that their total following across platforms now stands at 59.2 million as a result of these failures.⁸ The 20 anti-vaxxers with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total.

The Disinformation Dozen account for up to 73% of Facebook’s anti-vaxx content

Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over 689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.

This analysis is based on a representative sample of 483 pieces of anti-vaccine content that are known to be circulating in anti-vaccine Facebook Groups. We collected this sample by analyzing anti-vaccine posts containing URL links from 10 private and 20 public anti-vaccine Facebook Groups between 1 February and 16 March 2021. Groups in this sample have between 2,500 and 235,000 members and generate up to 10,000 posts per month. The largest anti-vaccine Facebook Group now has 236,000 members.

Researchers then analyzed the content of these URL links, tagging each of them to indicate whether they contained a member of the Disinformation Dozen or originated from a website controlled by or related to one of those members. For example, URL links to articles hosted on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense website were attributed to Kennedy, Jr.

Finally, in order to establish the full distribution of this content on Facebook, we used Facebook’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool to establish how many times these URLs have been shared on the platform.

This revealed that the anti-vaccine content in our sample had been posted or shared across Facebook a total of 689,404 times. Content attributed to members of the Disinformation Dozen had been posted or shared 503,896 times, representing 73.1 percent of the total anti-vaccine posts represented by our sample.

Facebook is underestimating the influence of leading anti-vaxxers

Recent reports suggest that Facebook conducted its own internal analysis to understand the spread of vaccine hesitant content on its platform.

According to these reports, Facebook’s data scientists discovered that just 10 out of 638 population segments contained 50 percent of all vaccine hesitancy content on the platform. These segments represented distinct types of users, Groups and Pages that could each be at least each 3 million people.

Facebook also found that in the population segment containing the most vaccine hesitancy, just 111 individual users contributed half of all vaccine hesitant content. These findings corroborate our research showing that just a small number of determined anti-vaxxers are responsible for much of the anti-vaccine content on Facebook, but Facebook is likely to be under-representing the concentration of the problem for two reasons. [more]

The Disinformation Dozen: Why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers