Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, February 23rd. I'm Nyla Boudou.

Here's what we're covering today. How the Census and Supreme Court are changing redistricting.

Plus, the pandemic is causing even more of a push for better broadband.

But first, today's one big thing. How memes drive misinformation.

For years, there's been growing concern about deep fakes,

doctored images, and photos. And that these deep fakes are what would erode trust in the truth and further spread of misinformation.

But now, when we think about the anti-vaccine movement, the capital insurrection,

even the recent GameStop investors uprising against Wall Street,

it's becoming clear that memes are what we really should be worried about.

Sarah Fisher is Axios' media reporter. Sarah, I think this is probably most obvious these days when it comes to the COVID vaccine.

How are we seeing memes erode trust in vaccines?

Well, there's tons of research that shows that when somebody is exposed to misinformation about the vaccine,

they are less likely to want to go take it. So that's a huge public health issue.

But aside from that, we're seeing a lot of memes being used to confuse people about what the vaccine really is.

So for example, there was a tweet in late December that signal labs, which is a disinformation research firm, sent to us.

And it showed what a map of the vaccine looks like, the components, the scientific components within it.

And it put it next to what it claimed was a 5G chip diagram trying to draw a comparison between the vaccines makeup and a 5G chip.

In real life, that actually wasn't a 5G chip diagram at all. It was actually the components of a guitar pedal.

So it was completely doctored. But this is an example of how one meme launched an entire conspiracy online just because it was so well done and it was so confusing.

What's the hardest part of detecting misinformation when it comes from a meme?

What's really challenging Naila is if somebody were to post that in a text-based phrase, we now have machine learning that can understand anti-vax misinformation and probably flag it.

And we also, by the way, have technology that can identify misleading photos.

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