After Twitter began tagging questionable COVID or election-based information, a new standard is hopefully slowly being pushed onto social media platforms, forcing them to police harmful lies about important issues. These businesses obviously never want to delete content if they can help it, as it can only serve to alienate users and bring forth claims of censorship. However, due to massive pushes from frustrated users, these platforms are finally making moves to limit the dangerous disinformation that is being spread. One such subreddit was known as “No New Normal,” which was made to vent frustrations over COVID restrictions, share news on the virus, and generally discuss the past year or so. However, as time went on, No New Normal became a hub for anti-vaccination sentiment. As Reddit users became aware of this, various major subreddits began a blackout, protesting No New Normal’s existence, and demanding that Reddit delete the subreddit. It took a few days of back and forth, but Reddit finally caved and closed No New Normal. While some people consider this to be the bare minimum, it is at least a step towards limiting the share of harmful disinformation on the platform. It’s worth noting that YouTube regularly takes down all kind of videos that are unsuited to its platform. Whether these videos are related to pornography, gore, or some other kind of controversial topic, YouTube will usually step in to remove them. However, this is the first time that YouTube has made a big deal of removing any kind of disinformation. This is an ongoing crusade, unlike Reddit’s single action of deleting a subreddit, and will likely continue far into the years once the pandemic has fully subsided. While they’re focusing on COVID disinformation for now, hopefully this will expand to things like climate change denial, stopping the platform from being a vessel for fake news. However, with the rise of negative perceptions from the public, social media platforms are being forced to combat any disinformation, with Twitter adding verification warnings to questionable Tweets, and Facebook deleting groups centered around anti-science rhetoric. Hopefully this will lead to an increase in faith in social media, as we become more able to trust what we’re shown.
