I’m a 3rd year medical student and I’ve already been caught off-guard a few times by the WILD medical misinformation my patients talk about, and figured that I should probably get ahead of it so that I can have some kind of response prepared. (Or know what the hell they’ve OD’d on or taken that is interfering with their actual medications)
I’m setting up a dummy tablet with a new account that isn’t tied to me in any reasonable way to collect medical misinformation from. I’m looking at adding tik tok, instagram, twitter, reddit, and facebook accounts to train the algorithms to show medical misinformation. Are there any other social media apps or websites I should add to scrape for medical misinformation?
Also, any pointers on which accounts to look for on those apps to get started? I have an instagram account for my artwork and one for sharing accurate medical information, but I’ve trained my personal algorithm to not show me all the complete bullshit for the sake of my blood pressure. (And I have never used tik tok before, so I have no goddamn clue how that app works)
The Facebook groups. They’re so batshit. I’m going to PM you a screenshot I took because I can’t share photos on this community for some reason.
It hurts my soul that this is actually a good addition.
They both should have associated accounts across multiple social media sites.
That’s actually super helpful. I’ll need a few “content creators” to seed the dummy account with.
Be aware that when you seek out medical disinfo on social media, you don’t just increase its visibility in your own feed, but in everyone else’s as well.
One account in the milieu isn’t going to make that much of a difference.
Go on Facebook, look up and type any illness + cure
Look for any common condition using any search engine and discover just how misinformed the global population really is.
I am an ICT professional with over 40 years experience and in my own field it’s often obvious how a technical response sounds right but is in reality absolute bollocks.
I know from lived medical experience that the same is true for medicine. However, being outside my own field it’s much harder to detect, even with quotes and citations.
My wife is a Rheumatologist. She actually had a patient attempt to use an article SHE WROTE to argue against her diagnosis. The article the patient was “citing” was not even applicable to the symptoms the patient presented.
🤣
I got you.
Any pyramid scheme that has anything to do with food or health. Their books are troves of made-up shit. Sometimes they’ll say true things (i.e. highly processed foods are less nutritious than whole foods), but then tell you to eat highly processed food five times a day.
They’ll have several hour-long meetings where they talk about how the magic crystals, protein bar, or energy shake is changing their life.
Their websites are fucking whack-a-doodle. There’s usually one quack with an MD rubber-stamping, fabricating, and/or misrepresenting evidence.
Not a doctor but I’d love this as well. I’ve seen various assorted noctors and nurses and other patients spout some shit that was so wildly off base I couldn’t even imagine how this came about or was even believable in the slightest.
I remember the one time a really good nurse told me how I “seemed alright” because I was decently informed on my condition and asked appropriate questions and it’s been in the back of my head ever since how she thought it was a noteworthy exception to the norm that she could somewhat trust me.
Just look up real medical issues and pick the opposite of what looks real.
The algorithms will take care of the rest because people who fall for it don’t just look up their own conditions, they start down the rabbit hole of “all medicine is fake” because that’s easier to rationalize than doctor’s are only wrong with their condition.
That’s why it’s so dangerous, you don’t have to seek it out. Those videos get high engagement so the algorithm shoves them down everyone’s throat
4chan comes to mind. /fit/ would probably have a bunch of BS for you to trawl, /ck/ will probably have dietary misinfo, maybe /sci/ as well.
That will actually be helpful towards the weird stuff that men get into in addition to wholly unnecessary “hormone replacement therapy” (aka juicing on steroids)
Search for health and they don’t want you to know or doctors don’t want you to know.
That will be a good downtime activity, but I also want to know what the algorithms are shoveling.
Any homeopathic group or moms advice group.
