Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception — which includes birth-control pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs) — is safe and effective, they worry the profession’s long-standing lack of transparency about some of the serious but rare side effects has left many patients seeking information from unqualified online communities.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Yeah. Somebody set up a bot with multiple accounts on multiple servers, generating tens of thousands of identical comments in numerous communities.

      Unfortunately, mbin and kbin don’t support federated comment removals, so some people still see the spam