Many Americans are scared to take the COVID-19 vaccine after QAnon Facebook groups have pushed false information about the shot.
According to the Washington Post, Facebook is doing a massive study about anti-vaccine users, documents show.
"The research is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy, or the act of delaying or refusing a vaccination despite its availability, on social media — a primary source of health information for millions of people," the report explained.
Facebook has removed false and misleading information about the coronavirus for the last few months, but the groups were allowed to grow and spread lies for a year until the social media site did anything to stop it. Some information, like someone saying the side effects were worse than expected, are opinions that can create a dialogue, but at the same time, it might stop someone from getting the shot.
The data discovered thus far revealed that out of U.S. users, groups and pages, they segmented people into 638 segments. They found that just 10 out of the 638 contained 50 percent vaccine hesitancy.
"And in the population segment with the most vaccine hesitancy, just 111 users contributed half of all vaccine hesitant content," said the Post.
NPR revealed that in their survey, more than 60 percent of Republican men, who haven't been vaccinated, already say that they'll refuse to get it. It's unclear how much of that belief is driven by social media, however.