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)
Facebook, tiktok, insta. Influencer girls promoting their own products, mineral stones, etc. Groups with conservatives, old people, MAGA, right wing extremists, hippies, yoga guru’s, basically any group with low IQ people who feel hurt and claim a monopoly on the truth. Truth social could be great too. And religious groups of course.
University press releases, they often are very far from what the actual research says
Just search any symptom and add to it “home remedies” what ever will come will probably include medical misinformation.
Not really the internet, but I remember Dr. Oz being a daytime TV show that was full of quackery delivered as though it was coming from an expert.
Search for health and they don’t want you to know or doctors don’t want you to know.
I wonder if there is a list of Joe Rogan guests or an AI summary of the episodes. Also, Snopes covers a lot and won’t rot your brain.
It hurts my soul that this is actually a good addition.
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.
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.
Dunno what type of tablet you’ve got but Apple News is pretty solidly loaded with medical fear mongering that’s sanewashed via being from interviews with “experts.”
Buzzfeed, Newsweek, HuffPost, etc. are your main name-brand culprits. Other magazines/websites also push this garbage but it’s a little more obvious.
Other key words across social media would probably be “nutritionist,” “coach,” “guru,” and other catchy terms that basically mean unlicensed. I’ve never used TikTok but when I was on Instagram years ago those were the biggest offenders.
Go on Facebook, look up and type any illness + cure
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.
They both should have associated accounts across multiple social media sites.
