The novel coronavirus is one of the most complicated biological mysteries in human history.

For doctors and scientists, anyway, for an astonishing number of quacks, scoundrels, and fools, it is easily explained.

Facebook says it has removed 7 million posts about fake cures for the virus or prevention measures.

That you can actually self-check yourself, that if you can hold your breath for 10 seconds,

you don't have the coronavirus. That's absurd.

A false Facebook post earlier this year claiming that chopped garlic with boiling water could cure coronavirus overnight.

Not that fake news on Facebook is anything new.

In a 2020 survey of misinformation and disinformation during the last election cycle,

Facebook spread more lies than both Google and Twitter and was abused by a variety of bad

actors and their dupes to sabotage the election.

Democracy here and around the world was a casualty of a business model that prized growth

over the public good. And now comes a catastrophic pandemic. And despite the corporate promises

to protect its users, the data showed that nothing has changed.

According to Avaz, a global nonprofit that works online to protect democracies from disinformation on social media,

Facebook's algorithm has helped bad actors achieve a staggering 3.8 billion views for COVID conspiracy theories, phony health advice,

and political mischief. Fetti Karan is the campaign director at Avaz. Fetty, welcome to

All the Media. Thank you so much, Bob. It's a pleasure to be on the show with you.

3.8 billion servings of ban information is terrible on the face of it.

How did that reach compare to the information delivered by authoritative sources like

the World Health Organization, the CDC, and so on?

What our report finds, which is terrifying, is that content from the top 10 websites

spreading health misinformation had four times, four times as many views as equivalent content

...