TikTok Traffic on Monkeypox Conspiracy Theories Swelled After WHO’s Alert

On the same day in May that the WHO released a news item addressing the global monkeypox outbreak, researchers identified over 150 videos featuring conspiracy theories about the virus on TikTok, which had received nearly 1.5 million views.

In a round-up of these videos, 11 types emerged, including theories that monkeypox was orchestrated by the elusive “them,” that vaccine manufacturers introduced monkeypox to administer their vaccines, that Bill Gates was involved in the outbreak, and that the WHO released the virus to gain more power, reported Marco Zenone, MSc, and Timothy Caulfield, LLB, LLM, of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, in JAMA Network Open.

“Many [videos] presented distorted, untrue portrayals of global and public health infrastructure and motives. This included incorrect claims on the role and authority of the World Health Organization, vaccine development or approval processes, and the reasons simulated pandemic exercises occur,” Zenone told MedPage Today in an email.

Of the 153 videos, 71 said the monkeypox outbreak was planned. “The COVID pandemic was just a test run. They’re not done. They saw how compliant we were for a flulike virus and now they’re going to release another one. And guaranteed it will be worse,” one video noted.

A third of these videos blamed vaccine manufacturers and governments for the outbreak, with comments like, “In November of 2021 Justin Trudeau spent millions of dollars on smallpox vaccines. It’s almost like they knew it was coming, like it was a giant plan,” and “They figured they couldn’t stick you with your poison the first time so they’re going to actually create an outbreak. But don’t worry they have everything in place to make sure you take your vaccines here really soon. Wake up.”

Bill Gates was the target of 28 videos, which claimed he was behind the monkeypox outbreak because of his predictions that smallpox or bioterror was coming. “Anybody else think it’s oddly suspicious a relatively short time after Bill Gates says there is going to be a smallpox outbreak, there is a monkeypox outbreak?” one video asked.

Nearly 18% of videos blamed the WHO directly, accusing the global organization of being power-hungry, with comments like, “[I]t just so happens right before the WHO wants to meet for this an outbreak of monkeypox is coming out. Coincidence I think not. They’re trying to force the new world order…”

TikTok is a good platform to scan because it has a “push” algorithm, Caulfield explained in a phone interview; the viewer does not actively have to search for content. Moreover, TikTok is known to have a high rate of misinformation. In fact, in a recent sampling of videos on prominent news topics, NewsGuard found that 20% contained misinformation.

“Our results demonstrated the potential use of real-time social media data to identify and understand conspiracy theories before their viral spread,” Zenone and Caulfield wrote. “This is particularly important during the information-gathering phase of infectious outbreaks. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the challenges of viral misinformation and the need to proactively deter it.”

Getting on top of misinformation is a good way to dispel it, they noted, outlining three avenues to respond to misinformation:

• “Prebunking”: stopping misinformation before it spreads
• “Debunking” when it spreads
• Holding the producers and enablers of dis/misinformation accountable

Caulfield brings firsthand experience to the table. As a co-founder of ScienceUpFirst, a Canadian nonprofit initiative to debunk health misinformation, he works with independent scientists, researchers, healthcare experts, and science communicators to seek out falsities and address them, with a particular focus on the “movable middle” — not the “hardcore” conspiracy theorists. “They will not change their minds,” he noted.

His work has made him the target of hate mail, threats, complaints, and accusations that he is silencing freedom of expression. “People yell at me on the street,” he said. “But showing something is wrong is not an infringement on freedom of expression. It is simply using the marketplace of ideas to push back against the noise.”

He explained that people spread misinformation for several reasons. Some may be staying true to their brand, others have a particular agenda, like an economic motivation (for likes), and others may just enjoy being an insider with “special knowledge.”

Many are angry, Caulfield added. For example, in the monkeypox videos, “it was amazing how consistent the message and tone was … often they were sitting in their car, screaming into their phone.”

After the WHO released their news item on May 21, noting that “risk communication should be informed by insights from social listening detecting public sentiment and should timely address possible rumours and misinformation,” Zenone and Caulfield searched for TikTok videos with the #monkeypox hashtag to identify those that contained conspiracy theories.

The 153 videos they identified as containing “logical fallacies” had an estimated mean time since posting of 30.2 hours. Overall, these videos received 1,485,911 views (median 2,872, IQR 1,691-6,697), 74,328 likes (median 192, IQR 93-386), 7,890 comments (median 26, IQR 12-53), and 13,783 shares (median 21, IQR 8-58).

Zenone and Caulfield noted that a limitation to their study was that they included only videos in English under one hashtag, and there were likely videos with conspiracy theories in other languages or with different hashtags.