Is Social Media Disinformation a Ticking Timebomb?

A Harvard professor predicted COVID disinformation on the web. Here’s what may be coming next.

According to a story by Pranshu Verma of the Boston Globe, at a time when false claims around COVID-19 and politics are running rampant, Joan Donovan has been able to predict what types of disinformation will travel from the darkest corners of the Internet to — in some cases — the highest levels of the US government.

Now, she has a broader warning: If Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media companies don’t change their algorithms, any number of recent lies spreading online could take hold in the next few months and threaten the national discourse around the pandemic recovery, climate change, and racial inequality.

Read the full story.