With so many of us currently under mandatory “stay-at-home” orders, there’s a lot more time to scroll through our social media feeds. Unfortunately, that means we’re getting exposed to more coronavirus related conspiracies and fake news.

But what is fueling this misinformation on these sites? University of Southern California’s Jon-Patrick Allem gets to the bottom of the matter.

As the director of the Social Media Analytics Lab at the Keck School of Medicine, Allem points out that those posts are created to go viral, which people then share without critically thinking. Others are also looking to score approval or gain attention.

Part two is the companies themselves, who claim to work towards stomping out the problem but get overwhelmed or rely too much on artificial intelligence to catch the false posts.

Source: https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/06/social-media-fuels-wave-of-coronavirus-misinformation/