transmission was happening, or which infection came from which
source. Contrast this with the rise of social media, and manipulation
campaigns that follow specific users around the internet. When it
comes to spreading ideas, groups seeding information in recent years
have had a much better idea about the paths of transmission, but the
sources of infection have been invisible to everyone else.[127]
Uncovering and measuring the spread of misinformation and
disinformation will be crucial if we want to design effective counter-
measures. Without a good understanding of contagion, there’s a risk
of either blaming the wrong source, ‘bad air’-style, or proposing
simplistic strategies like abstinence, which – as with STI prevention –
might work in theory but not in practice. By accounting for the
transmission process, we’ll have a better chance of avoiding
epidemiological errors like these.
We’ll also be able to take advantage of knock-on benefits. When
something is contagious, a control measure will have both a direct
and indirect effect. Think about vaccination. Vaccinating someone has
a direct effect because they now won’t get infected; it also has an
indirect effect because they won’t pass an infection on to others.
When we vaccinate a population, we therefore benefit from both the
direct and indirect effects.
The same is true of online contagion. Tackling harmful content will
have a direct effect – preventing a person from seeing it – as well as
an indirect effect, preventing them spreading it to others. This means
well-designed measures may prove disproportionately effective. A
small drop in the reproduction number can lead to a big reduction in
the size of an outbreak.
‘I bad for us?’ asked two Facebook
researchers in late 2017. David Ginsburg and Moira Burke had
weighed up the evidence about how social media use affects
wellbeing. The results, published by Facebook, suggested that not all
interactions were beneficial. For example, Burke’s research had
previously found that receiving genuine messages from close friends
seemed to improve users’ wellbeing, but receiving casual feedback –
such as likes – did not. ‘Just like in person, interacting with people