Reddit as a global platform needs to take responsibility here. There can be no room for leniency when people are dying as a result of misinformation on this platform. There is a good chance that the disinformation that reddit is currently inundated with will necessitate people a stay at the toxicology department in the hospital or even cost them their lives. This is dangerous when it comes to unsafe medical advice such as promoting the ingestion or injection of cattle dewormers, a known side effect of which is sudden death 4, or such as trying to convince people that a tested, FDA approved vaccine will cause death. The main problem with a concerted disinformation campaign is that such a message attains an air of legitimacy through sheer volume of repetition. There needs to be a more active involvement in preventing the spread of the disinformation that is keeping us within a pandemic that at this point is entirely manageable. Lies are repeated so frequently that misinformed people begin to believe them wholeheartedly, trusting that they can't be incorrect because they're surrounded by people who believe it also. Trying to keep children safe is painted as "child abuse". Social distancing is valuable 3, but people are being persuaded to not even do that. **The vaccine is safe,** 2 it is not untested, and it is not experimental technology or DNA manipulation, but people getting their information from these propaganda subreddits are told the opposite. Masks work 1, but not according to the propaganda. All empirically proven measures which can help save lives are under attack. There is no area of recognised safety procedures when it comes to battling the spread of a dangerous virus that is not under attack here. The disinformation and false information is manifold. It is clear that even after promising to tackle the problem of misinformation on this site, nothing of substance has been done aside from quarantining a medium sized subreddit, which barely reduces traffic and does little to stop misinformation. This volume of blatant misinformation is problematic and dangerous. There are those who deny that the pandemic even exists, there are those who think that wearing a mask will literally suffocate you, there are those who think it's no worse than a regular flu virus, that it's a bioweapon, and everything in between. We could have been better off months ago, but disinformation and lies have been allowed to spread readily through inaction and malice, and have dragged this on at the cost of lives. You may have been in lockdown, you may have been forced to work under some form of duress, you may have lost a loved one to the disease, you may be left with long term side effects of the illness, you may have found that regular food, housing, and/or medical care is less attainable or more expensive now. Everyone on this planet has been affected by the SARS-Cov-2/Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic.
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