Individuals who believe and spread all kinds of different medical misinformation has always existed. But they have never had the ability to reach and influence millions of people like the so easily can today. This is just one example. Posts like this can literally lead to deaths. This is so "new" and such a strange area of speech that no one can do anything about it. Public health literacy is so skewed. They become firmly resistant to learning something new from an actual doctor and only trust their own "research". This needs to be stopped somehow. I live in the US. And here, there would be little hope of the government getting involved to try and help this situation. The actual government preventing people from saying these kinds of things can violate the first amendment. Medical misinformation and incorrect scientific speech is still protected under the first amendment of the US constitution and our supreme court has upheld it several times. However, the individual social media companies absolutely have the ability to control this. They are private companies and can regulate what kind of content is allowed on their platform. I know though that it is not in their financial interest to help this situation. These companies have shown, time and again, that they do not care about public health at all. The content is carefully designed to keep users addicted and scrolling as much as possible. Profit, of course, is priority number one. But is there any way at all to put pressure on these companies to regulate this? Is it just hopeless? Is there any way for medical professionals to unite and fight this? I'm just fed up and wanted to know others thoughts.   submitted by   /u/chiefcomplaintRN [link]   [comments]