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frequently. That is because, accord-
ing to the EU regulation on health
claims, the health information pro-
vided by supplement retailers must
be based on generally accepted
scientific data and thus be substan-
tiated. Of course, these scientific
findings do not yet exist for supple-
ments related to the coronavirus.
Health care hoax sites also
have another source of revenue:
Major companies such as Amazon,
Walmart and Berkshire Hathaway’s
Geico, which (possibly unknow-
ingly) subsidize some of the inter-
net’s sketchiest content through
algorithmic-based programmatic
advertising.
For instance, ads for the AIDS
Institute, a nonprofit that advo-
cates for people with HIV/AIDS,
appeared on a coronavirus conspir-
acy theory on Red State Watcher, an
anonymously operated conservative
site that is one of the 150 most pop-
ular sites in the U.S. Ads for popu-
lar, mainstream Herschel backpacks
accompanied an inaccurate story
about the virus’ origin on TheMind-
Unleashed.com, a site that promises
to “disseminate and inspire out-of-
the-box thinking,” but actually pub-
lishes falsehoods.
As the coronavirus “infodemic”
grows, so will the financial fortunes
of the fraudsters running these
sites.Ơ NewsGuard (www.newsguardtech.
com) provides a human solution to
misinformation by rating the reli-
ability of news and information sites.
Our ratings, based on nine objective
journalistic criteria, give each web-
site a score from zero to 100—along
with a corresponding Green (gener-
ally reliable) or Red (generally unre-
liable) shield—and give people more
context for what they read online.