monkeypox conspiracy theories spread like wildfire on tiktok

just a day and a half after the world health organization (who) declared monkeypox an emergency in july, hundreds of conspiracy theories had been spread on social media, according to a new study from the university of alberta. the rapid-fire spread of misinformation on these platforms poses a significant threat to public health and highlights the importance of understanding and monitoring social media platforms.

belief in one conspiracy theory leads to belief in others

when monkeypox was classified over the summer as a “ public health emergency of international concern,” many of the conspiracies that started to spread — that the outbreak was orchestrated, that it was a ruse to force people to get vaccinated, that bill gates was somehow involved — closely resembled the conspiracy theories that circulated about the covid-19 pandemic.

“it’s incredible how consistent the conspiracy theories are,” said health misinformation expert dr. timothy caulfield , one of the study’s authors and a canada research chair in health law and policy.

researchers focused on tiktok, the fast-growing app that allows users to watch and share short videos. “tiktok has really emerged as a social media platform juggernaut,” caulfield says, pointing out that the app has nearly two billion global users. “we know that many people are increasingly using tiktok not just as entertainment, but also as a source of news and information… what we really wanted to do is get a sense of the degree to which you can use a platform like tiktok to identify emerging misinformation.”

together, caulfield and his colleague marco zenone watched hundreds of tiktok videos. they searched the app for the hashtag “#monkeypox” and collected 864 videos: 153 of them contained conspiracy theories or conspiratorial themes about the virus — purporting that it was a hoax, that it was released deliberately or that it was created to grant more power to who, for instance. within 30 hours, those 153 videos had 1.5 million views, 75,000 likes and 14,000 shares. (there were some limitations of the study, researchers acknowledged: they only looked at videos shared in english, and with that particular hashtag — there were likely many others with different hashtags shared in other languages.)

misinformation of this kind spreads on social media, but its impacts are in the real world: research has shown that it can increase vaccine hesitancy, lead to misallocation of health resources and erode the state of people’s mental health.

the role of social media in spreading health misinformation

but misinformation on social media, exacerbated by these kinds of algorithms, is a problem that extends beyond tiktok. nearly half of the covid content circulating on twitter is likely bots , according to researchers at carnegie mellon university.   earlier this year, a study found that instagram regularly suggested content to users that featured lies about covid, and during the 2020 u.s. election, misinformation shared on facebook received six times the traffic as legitimate news, the washington post reported.