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Facebook joins Google in deprioritizing medical misinformation: Are social media companies finally “getting it”?

Yesterday, social media giant Facebook announced that it was acting against medical misinformation by using keyphrases to deprioritize results promoting misinformation and scams? Is it enough, and is it too late?

A few months ago, I noted the belated efforts of social media networks to reduce the flow of medical misinformation, and just last month I wrote about how Google had apparently changed its search algorithm to deprioritize health-related misinformation in its search results, resulting in certain quacks complaining that their website’s search traffic had taken massive hits. Also in June, all purpose health scammer and conspiracy theory creator Mike Adams was banned from Facebook, with a predictably amusing reaction on his part to the interruption of his grift due to social media blacklisting. So it was with great interest that I read this press release from Facebook that someone sent me:

In our ongoing efforts to improve the quality of information in News Feed, we consider ranking changes based on how they affect people, publishers and our community as a whole. We know that people don’t like posts that are sensational or spammy, and misleading health content is particularly bad for our community. So, last month we made two ranking updates to reduce (1) posts with exaggerated or sensational health claims and (2) posts attempting to sell products or services based on health-related claims.

  • For the first update, we consider if a post about health exaggerates or misleads — for example, making a sensational claim about a miracle cure.
  • For the second update, we consider if a post promotes a product or service based on a health-related claim — for example, promoting a medication or pill claiming to help you lose weight.

We handled this in a similar way to how we’ve previously reduced low-quality content like clickbait: by identifying phrases that were commonly used in these posts to predict which posts might include sensational health claims or promotion of products with health-related claims, and then showing these lower in News Feed.

And:

Posts with sensational health claims or solicitation using health-related claims will have reduced distribution. Pages should avoid posts about health that exaggerate or mislead people and posts that try to sell products using health-related claims. If a Page stops posting this content, their posts will no longer be affected by this change.

I couldn’t help but remember as I read this that when I noted Facebook’s attempts to crack down on antivaccine misinformation by deprioritizing it in search results that I had considered it a good start, but suggested that limiting these measures to just antivaccine misinformation, although a good start, was not good enough. After all, Facebook also serves as the organizing nexus for many antivaccine groups, including their harassment of pro-science voices online. I also had a number of questions. First, however, how did we get here?

One of the greatest changes in the online experience that I’ve experienced in my nearly 30 years online has been the rise of social media platforms. When I first started online, it was basically BBS, email, and Usenet. Later, by the mid-1990s there were websites (most of which had no commenting sections), and I didn’t get into blogs until the early 2000s. These days, various messaging apps and platforms appear to be supplanting email, and the vast majority of people too young to have been online 15 years or more ago have no clue what Usenet was. (Does anyone even still use it?) Basically, you can think of Usenet as Reddit-like social media before there was social media. Tt was (is) a massive worldwide mass of discussion forums. What was very different from what we have now is that Usenet was decentralized, without a dedicated central server and administrator, and pretty much uncontrolled by anyone, other than Internet service providers, who decided which subset of the 100,000+ newsgroups they’d allow their users to access and how much storage space they would devote to each newsgroup. Oh, sure, people could set up moderated newsgroups for whom members had to be approved, but most of Usenet was the Wild West. In contrast, today, social media is centralized and controlled by a few companies: Facebook, Twitter, Google (which owns YouTube and, of course, controls the vast majority of the search engine business all of us depend on to find information online), and a handful of other, lesser players plus the comment sections of various websites and blogs (which, increasingly, are being run by software from Facebook or other players like Disqus and whose main sites tend to be run by WordPress or a couple of other companies) and some specialized web-based discussion forums.

There have been several consequences of this centralization of social media. One consequence is that it’s become much easier for people to post content that can rack up thousands (or millions) of views. With Facebook and YouTube, for instance, you can post video, image, or sound files for free and don’t have to worry about hosting your own site or paying for your own bandwith. Apple and other services let you post audio files for podcasts for free. Even better, YouTube and Facebook provide ways for you to monetize your content by running ads, with the company getting its cut of course. Another consequence is that clicks mean everything, because monetization depends on getting people to read, listen to, or watch your online content. In addition, because these platforms make it far easier to share media than ever before, it’s very easy for information (and misinformation) to “go viral” and spread exponentially, as more and more people share and reshare it. Old-timers might remember how complicated it was to share binary files to Usenet. (Anyone remember uuencode?) The binary file had to be encoded into ASCII, and then you had to have a program to decode the ASCII back to binary to retrieve the file. (Most of these files were pictures or sound files; video formats were not well standardized yet, and video files were just too massive.) It was worse than that, though. Because of character limits, the ASCII-encoded binary file often had to be split into many Usenet posts and then reassembled. Fun times, indeed.

Of course, the huge problem that’s arisen is that the ease with which media, be it written, images, sound, or video, can be shared and monetized has been a boon for quacks and antivaxers, who routinely use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media to spread their health misinformation and hawk their quackery, while monetizing their content—not to mention to harass their opponents as well. (It’s not just health misinformation, as the rise of Alex Jones and his ilk demonstrated.) Add to that the way Google has worked is to rank websites by the number and reputation of incoming links. It was basically popularity and usefulness contest, with the most popular content that is useful according to the metrics that Google uses to determine usefulness showing up on the first page. As a result, a whole lot of quack and antivaccine websites showed up way too high on Google search results for a whole lot of health topics, including vaccines; that is, at least until Google tweaked its algorithm and started enforcing the quality guidelines that it had for its human reviewers a month ago.

Which brings me back to the Facebook announcement. All I could think about was: How is Facebook going to implement this? Its announcement says that its method will identify phrases that are commonly used in posts promoting health misinformation to predict which posts might include sensational health claims or promotion of products with health-related claims and use them to rank these stories lower in the newsfeed. It all sounds good, but how? For a system like this to work, you either have to know these phrases already, in which case I’d wonder who is telling Facebook engineers and coders what these phrases are, or you have to have a collection of quack and antivax websites that Facebook engineers can analyze to identify common phrases that are much more common in such websites. Either way, Facebook needs people to do this, and these people need to be experts in what is and isn’t reliable health information. Does it have these people? If so, who are they?

The thing is, the number of health care professionals who are experts in identifying dubious health claims is a pretty small percentage of the the population of health care professionals. The percentage of physicians, for instance, who are skeptics and able to identify quack websites is fairly low. Of course, it’s likely that Facebook is only going after the most egregious examples, the sort of content that pretty much any physician or nurse should be able to identify, which is helpful, but would still leave a lot of less obvious health misinformation on its platform. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s the best that can be done.

On the other hand, let’s look at a couple of examples, first: MTHFR gene mutations. You can find a whole lot of websites claiming that MTHFR mutations predispose to vaccine injury. That’s not obviously quacky, and I daresay that most physicians who haven’t looked into the issue will immediately recognize the claims made about these mutations as the pseudoscience that they are. Ditto claims about mitochondrial disorders as predisposing to “vaccine-induced autism.” How about cancer quackery? Clínica 0-19, for instance, uses interventional radiology, chemotherapy, and a dubious immunotherapy to treat brainstem tumors. If you don’t know anything about the treatment other than what you read online, you might think it sounds reasonable, even if you are a physician. Even Stanislaw Burzynski might be hard for a lot of physicians to identify as a quack, particularly given all of his clinical trials. Most doctors assume that, if the FDA sanctioned a clinical trial of a treatment, there must be something to it, which, by the way, quack stem cell clinics have too. Basically, what I’m saying is that a certain skillset is needed.

Of course, being as algorithm-obsessed as it is, it wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook is trying to do this alone with AI and without much in the way of input from knowledgeable medical professionals. It could just be relying on users to flag pages, links, and websites, which would be unlikely to work very well. I guess time will tell.

I also know that it will be interesting to see the reaction of prominent antivaccine quacks. For instance, Mike Adams, being Mike Adams, published a typical one of his rants. It doesn’t have to do with Facebook, but it’s amusing nonetheless, as he claims that by the end of 2020 Google Chrome will “block all anti-cancer, “anti-vax” and anti-GMO websites at the browser level“:

By late 2020, Google’s Chrome browser will automatically block all so-called anti-cancer, “anti-vax” and anti-GMO websites as part of Google’s collapse into a Monsanto/Pharma criminal cartel. Users who want to visit websites that expose the scientifically-validated risks and potential harm of vaccines, chemotherapy, glyphosate or GMOs will have to switch to alternative browsers and search engines, since the Google.com search engine is already in the process of eliminating all such websites from its search results. Within a year or so, the Google Chrome browser won’t even allow a user to visit sites like NaturalNews.com without changing the browser’s default settings. The only websites accessible through Chrome will be those which are “approved” to promote mass medication, chemotherapy, pesticides, vaccines, fluoride, 5G cell towers and other poisons that enrich powerful, globalist corporations while dumbing down the population

Wait? Of course, he doesn’t link to any primary source for his claim; so I highly doubt that it’s true. Even if it is true, Adams just admitted that users will still be able to access all those sites if they change a default setting. So you’ll have to change the browser’s settings or use a different browser to see low quality quack content? Oh, the humanity! (That is, if it’s even true, which I doubt.) I also really doubt this bit:

According to our source, Google’s Chrome browser will also report back to Google when a logged in users attempts to access one of these sites, adding a “social penalty score” to that user, mirroring communist China’s social credit scoring system. This social scoring system will be later used by Google to deny services to users who are considered “untrustworthy” by Google.

This doesn’t even make sense. I’m not naive enough to think that Google would never consider such a system, but to what end? Just knowing what people are looking for and linking it with other identifying information are what Google does, but that doesn’t stop Adams from out and out making stuff up speculating that Google and Facebook will team up to blackball users based on this.

However cranks like Mike Adams are reacting, there’s little doubt that, after ignoring the problem for so long that it might be too late to fix it, social media platforms have finally been reluctantly goaded into action to clean up their platforms. Facebook’s decision to deprioritize low quality information is just the latest example. Will these actions by Facebook, Google, and other tech giants to clean up their platform and block their platforms’ use to facilitate the spread of antivaccine views and other dangerous health misinformation? That remains to be seen.

In the meantime, if only there were a dedicated group of people who pay attention to misinformation—be it in medicine, science, financial scams, claims of paranormal, conspiracy theories, or any other topic—people who are skeptics and know how to identify misinformation, scams, and conspiracy theories. If only there were meetings for such groups every year—(cough! cough!) NECSS next week and CSICon in October—of such people. If only there were groups—(cough! cough!) Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia—who have been combatting misinformation on important information sources on the web for years. If only there were actual physicians combatting quackery and misinformation to whom Facebook, Google, et al could turn.

If only…

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

38 replies on “Facebook joins Google in deprioritizing medical misinformation: Are social media companies finally “getting it”?”

This is why we have medical librarians. I used to be one. We have been screening low-quality information for many decades. I hope the profession detects an opening here. In the old world it’s called editorial control, and it never went away; it’s just couched in buzzword-y techie jargon now.

Given their first criteria I worry how posts saying “vaccines are one of the greatest medical advances” or “vaccines save millions of lives” – both true – would fare.

Smart woman, you are … It’s the vaccine preamble; ‘Vaccines are the greatest medical achievement of the 20th/21st century … BUT’. lmao

Pretty soon schoolchildren will be reciting it every morning with hands reverently held over their hearts. I mean without the but. Just the first part.

Unless they are on the floor being propped up by their 1:1 para-professional, like my youngest was.

See now; minimizing Antivaccine posts won’t minimize anti-vaccination reactions.

@ Narad,
What? Sorry, I only ‘get’ the sarcasm I use. Which nobody else ever gets, so … Yeah.

I mean it’s nice that they’re at least doing something. Youtube still hosts a lot of the same documentaries that we’ve written about and have been removed from Amazon Prime. I will say that it is harder to find anti-vaxx content on YouTube even if you’re intentionally seeking it out. So google has definitely tweaked their stuff somewhat. I can’t wait to watch the NaturalNews views tank when the SimilarWeb report comes out.

I think a lot of the problem is that companies are trying to implement these machine learning/AI systems that suck. AI is really good if you want to make a Dota robot that can trash basically anyone. The problem is that when you’re using it forcing the AI to learn off of humans that don’t have an interest in acting in good faith, well you have a chatbot that is calling people the N-word in a matter of hours (I’m not even joking this actually happened). OpenAI works because the AI can train itself, it will play thousands of matches against itself and it knows what a good outcome is. It can actually outperform humans and lead to interesting discoveries.

On the flipside, the computer has no conception of what misinformation is or what’s appropriate. So we really need a way to downvote misinformation that is based upon a user trust score, as a sort of self moderation too. The automated systems just aren’t going to work, they’re very easily gamed and it’s obvious.

“On the flipside, the computer has no conception of what misinformation is or what’s appropriate.”

Partly. There is also the problem that even when an item has been determined to be a violation of some metric, if it is reposted with minor to moderate changes (depending on the algorithm) those reposts will not be flagged until they are detected. That was one of the issues with the video from the mosque shooting a few months ago: FB’s system did remove a large number of the reposts of it, but with even minor changes in playtime modified reposts weren’t immediately detected.

Facebook, Amazon and Twitter are actively enabling quacks and charlatans right now, today. Bleach cultists, for example, hawk their bullshit pretty much unimpeted. Look for Charisse Burchett as an example. When her accounts are closed down you’ll know reality is making headway/

When a rabidly anti-vax group like the National Vaccine Information Center gets shut out of Facebook–then I’ll believe Facebook is serious.

One step Facebook could take to show it’s serious about cracking down on health misinformation would be to make it easier for users to report problematic posts.

Right now you can flag posts as detrimental due to nudity, violence etc. Why not include a specific tag to indicate health misinformation/quackery and dedicate a few trained employees to evaluate and if necessary, remove it?

In other fun news, an eminent quackery diagnostician is featured in a front-page story in today’s Wall St. Journal (behind a subscriber paywall, but here’s an excerpt):

“As of Monday, YouTube videos viewed millions of times were among the postings advocating the use of a cell-killing, or necrotizing, ointment called black salve to treat skin cancer. Use of the ointment can inadvertently burn or kill healthy skin, and doesn’t remove cancerous growths beneath the skin, as is claimed in some videos, said David Gorski, a professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit who edits the blog Science-Based Medicine. The wounds could also lead to infection.

According to Dr. Gorski, misinformation about cancer on the internet is as much of a public-health issue as antivaccine misinformation. “It’s hard to argue which one is the worst,” he said.”

The story later notes that “Weeks after getting out of jail (for practicing medicine without a license) in November 2017, (Robert O.) Young* was back on Facebook…Mr. Young has multiple Facebook pages currently. He has a personal page and he and his affiliate run others dedicated to selling products and services, internationally and domestically. The pages contain posts with embedded videos and links to YouTube.”

*”father of the alkaline diet” and Arm & Hammer baking soda’s best friend.

Obviously, I was aware of that WSJ story, given that I was interviewed for it. However, I don’t have a WSJ subscription and haven’t been able to read the article. So I didn’t include it in this blog post!

I noticed that Pinterest really expanded the number of categories for reporting bad content to include something like “fake medical nonsense”. Sadly Facebook doesn’t have one like that yet for posts.

There’s a thing going around I’ll see sometimes where a friend will be tagged with a video, and that video is always some incredibly unsubtle scammy weight-loss thing (a person pours a liquid over a foam that dissipates, a quick shot of Dr Oz in front of a drawing of a person with a lot of belly fat, etc etc). I know it’s some obnoxious scammy thing and using the “tagging” to get around having to pay for an ad (and have the ad approved).

I always report those as “spam” but I wish there were something better.

One step Facebook could take to show it’s serious about cracking down on health misinformation would be to make it easier for users to report problematic posts.

Right now you can flag posts as detrimental due to nudity, violence etc. Why not include a specific tag to indicate health misinformation/quackery and dedicate a few trained employees to evaluate and if necessary, remove it?

In other fun news, an eminent quackery diagnostician is featured in a front-page story in today’s Wall St. Journal (behind a subscriber paywall, but here’s an excerpt):

“As of Monday, YouTube videos viewed millions of times were among the postings advocating the use of a cell-killing, or necrotizing, ointment called black salve to treat skin cancer. Use of the ointment can inadvertently burn or kill healthy skin, and doesn’t remove cancerous growths beneath the skin, as is claimed in some videos, said David G___ a professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit who edits the blog Science-Based Medicine. The wounds could also lead to infection.

According to Dr. G__, misinformation about cancer on the internet is as much of a public-health issue as antivaccine misinformation. “It’s hard to argue which one is the worst,” he said.”

The story later notes that “Weeks after getting out of jail (for practicing medicine without a license) in November 2017, (Robert O.) Young* was back on Facebook…Mr. Young has multiple Facebook pages currently. He has a personal page and he and his affiliate run others dedicated to selling products and services, internationally and domestically. The pages contain posts with embedded videos and links to YouTube.”

*”father of the alkaline diet” and Arm & Hammer baking soda’s best friend.

This can be important:

remember that TMR itself formed because of Facebook- a group of college friends ( unbelievable! I know!) got together to discuss their children’s issues- including ASD- and it spread from there: the website, books and non-profit came later. Other anti-vaxxers ( AoA, various Mom groups) use Facebook to spread mis-information and offer handy tips ( woo treatments). I wonder if smaller groups will be monitored as well as the big guns ( Mikey et al)?

Mikey himself must be spending a lot of money to create his own You Tube alternative called Brighteon.

Null – and his minions- have spent the last year insulting Wikipedia because his bio there is unflattering ( and resistant to his efforts to change it), giving no credence to his self-aggrandising confabulatory self-promotion ( curing aids and cancer, being a professor/ researcher./investigative reporter/ paradigm shifting warrior for economic/ political justice with a PhD) by writing up a storm ( see PRN.fm) investigating Wikip- , sceptics and SBM. The articles would be hilarious if they did reek of such obvious desperation..

Mercola sounds very worried as well.

“If only there were a dedicated group of people who pay attention to misinformation”
Oh, I know. Who can that be ? Where oh where are they? I wonder if they spread information using the internet themselves?

Take a bow, oh Orac and minions

Anyone remember uuencode?

¿Cómo no? Didn’t even need pseudonyms in the good ol’ days.

Why do my comments get censored when I ask people to read the vaccine insert?
It says:

Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, Impairment of Fertility
M-M-R II has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or potential to impair fertility.

I have stated CDC and manufacturer information. Science has be wrong before from semelweiss to versions of vaccines that have been recalled, to SV-40 being found in cancer tumor cells and the first polio vaccines.

Stop the censorship, Those who give up freedom for safety end up losing both.

If you are being censored, why am I able to read your comment and know that you are basing your argument upon package inserts?

I see “read the insert” comments all day on FB. And while I’m at it, SV-40 wasn’t known to exist when the first polio vaccines were made, hasn’t been in any vaccines in decades and hasn’t been proven to cause cancer in humans. And MMR has been evaluated for all those other issues for decades in post-marketing research with negative findings. I hope this relieves some of your anxiety.

@ Len,

“SV-40 wasn’t known to exist when the first polio vaccines were made” Right. I mean, right? The Simians don’t publish their health science research in common human formats, so we had to discover it actually IN the vaccine.

Okay, that was sarcasm.

SV40 has been found in human mesothelioma, osteosarcoma & non-hodgkins lymphoma. https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/sv40

Offit reviewed. He would know …

It could be said (but won’t) that you could add Medulloblastoma to that list (but there has been a lawsuit so shhh …).

Despite that it was discovered in the vaccine, they haven’t confirmed that the sv40 in human cancers came from the sv40 in the vaccine. Sadly; not sarcasm. That’s the narrative. Except that there is a small issue of DNA tracing/sequencing… It could be done. Maybe it has. It would be weird to think it hadn’t

christine, do you read anything you link to or do you simply not understand what you read? From the start of the item you “reference”.

“1. SV40 was present in cancers of people who either had or had not received the polio vaccines that were contaminated with SV40.
2. SV40 has not been present in any vaccine since 1963.
3. People with cancers who were born after SV40 was no longer a contaminant of the polio vaccine were found to have evidence for SV40 in their cancerous cells.
4. Epidemiologic studies do not show an increased risk of cancers in those who received polio vaccine between 1955 and 1963.”

That something does not have been known to exist does not that mean that it does not exist. Actually, SV40 was isolated during evaluation of polio vaccine.
There is a long term study of correlation between SV40 and cancer:
Potential exposure to SV40 in polio vaccines used in Sweden during 1957: no impact on cancer incidence rates 1960 to 1993.
Olin P , Giesecke J
Developments in Biological Standardization [01 Jan 1998, 94:227-233]
Christine Kincaid seems to forget this one, and that she was caught with miscitation.

“Those who give up freedom for safety end up losing both”

Argument by badly butchered quote, a favorite for people who were raised by bumper stickers.

It must be almost the 4th of July if we’re already having summer re-runs of trolls.

Hey Steve: good news. You never have to get another vaccine for the rest of your life! You might even get lucky and manage to avoid the shingles, influenza, tetanus, whooping cough and pneumonia. Not to mention all the mosquito borne diseases we’re going to have to worry about thanks to climate change.

“It must be almost the 4th of July”

Here it is almost half way through the 4th of July.

You are free to show your ignorance of what the significance of the package insert means, and you just did.

steve: It’s good to see someone who has such unwavering faith in the words of the CDC and pharmaceutical companies.

Sorry that you’re being censored. I must have imagined seeing your words here. Weird.

P.S. Since you believe that it’s censorship if Orac doesn’t post your words on his blog, I conclude it’s okay with you if Orac spraypaints “Vaccines are Safe” on the side of your house, right?

Steve Urow: “Those who give up freedom for safety end up losing both”.
Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

steve uroh wrote, “M-M-R II has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or potential to impair fertility.”

Well, yeah.

Similarly, MMR II has not been evaluated regarding it’s propensity to induce hip fractures, male pattern baldness, or what was described in a memorable Chinese herbal medicine paper as “loose teeth” combined with “laxity of the loins.” I suppose that’s because the extensive preclinical evidence and postmarketing surveillance for MMR II and earlier and similar vaccines suggested that there is nothing to merit such investigations. Even so, steve uroh’s statement might seem scary to anyone who is profoundly ignorant of how vaccines are developed and evaluated.

Why do my comments get censored when I ask people to read the vaccine insert?

Because it’s a holiday week, new commenters have to be confirmed not to be spambots, and the chief might have better things to do? It’s not like this dumbass shit hasn’t been trotted out hundreds of times anyway?

Stop the censorship, Those who give up freedom for safety end up losing both.

I do so love a simple potpourri of language abuse and attempted argument by mangled aphorism.

So Steve, what kinds of human experimentation are you looking for here? Are we (tinw) going to need bigger cages?

It’s not enough to bring up Semmelweis. Steve forgot to mention Galileo. Oh, and he neglected to throw in the guy who was persecuted over the discovery of Helicobacter pylori.

It’s all in the playbook, Steve. Page 37.

Bulletin for all minions and pharma stooges: the Google plot to suppress natural health information may be deeper, darker and more desperate than you realize, according to someone named Dave Hodges, who interviewed Mike Adams on the subject (in a video I plan to not subject myself to):

“Mike Adams has ventured out on the limb of extraterrestrial life and its possible interaction with humanity, or at least humanity’s self-appointed leaders. And I must warn the audience that the news on this topic is not good news for the current residents of this planet. There is no question that when Mike says the planet is being terraformed, he is correct and the evidence is irrefutable. I have written and broadcasted the same terraforming process myself and I have likened it to 1997 movie, The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen.”

“If this alien infiltration story is accurate, it is easy to conclude that Google is not serving humanity, but rather, they are serving a higher entity and Mike and myself both think that transhumanism inspired immortality may be the enticement for the cooperation of entities such as Google and certain world leaders.”

Note “possible” and “if…accurate”. Gotta attract the flaming loonies and leave yourself an out at the same time.

Mike Adams has ventured out on the limb of extraterrestrial life and its possible interaction with humanity, or at least humanity’s self-appointed leaders.

So, either Mikey isn’t a leader or he got snubbed by the Pleiadians? I’m confused.

Yep, you’re correct: Mikey got snubbed by the Pleiadians. I was just on the ansible with a friend on Vulcan and he pretty well confirmed it.

As you probably know, the Vulcan worlds are big on science-based medicine. They regard the Pleiadians as just a bit wooey but not too bad. The Pleiadian government has gotten more than a little sick of their people being used as foils for every quack from here to (I don’t know the Earth translation of the name of the star system my buddy mentioned) so they cracked down.

I would guess that for Mikey that was a particularly painful snub and it got his nose all out of joint. Rumor has it he even sent them ansiblemail to the effect of “but you use the word ‘energy’ in medicine too!” and they replied “that’s an artifact of our language, you know exactly what we mean and it’s not what you mean.” Then they called him a word that translates to English as “disingenuous self-interested lying bastard.”

Too bad for Mikey. It won’t be long before he’s de-platformed off Spacebook.

Speaking of Evil, the A.M.A. has (almost) come out for a “unified national approach to limit nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccination”.

An editorial in the 7/2 JAMA says “The best way to remedy the current system failure regarding measles vaccination may be to adopt a unified national approach to prohibit nonmedical exemptions, and thereby regain the degree of nationwide protection against vaccine-preventable disease from which children and other community members will benefit.”

Good luck with that one. What does “adopt a unified national approach” mean?

Has MMR been tested to make sure it’s not enriching uranium in violation of international statutes? People have a right to know.

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