A cofounder of the Food Truth Project warns social media has become the perfect breeding ground for the circulation of misinformation about food and nutrition. Farm and Food Care and Canadian Food Focus in partnership with the Food Truth Project hosted a webinar last week which looked at how social media algorithms amplify misinformation about food and why it matters for public health, consumer trust and the future of our food system.
Veronica Jaramillo, a Montreal-based food scientist and cofounder of the Food Truth Project, says most people are accessing information about food through the internet and social media.
Quote-Veronica Jaramillo-Food Truth Project:
Have we ever asked ourselves what decides what information these social media platforms will be given and that answer is the algorithm.If you've never heard of the algorithm before, it is essentially a set of rules that sorts, prioritises and delivers our content to us.The goal of these social media platforms is to keep us on their platform as long as possible so they're going to curate the algorithm to make sure that we stay on the platform as long as possible.
To do this, they track our engagement.
They see how long we watch certain videos, the topics of those videos, what we like, our age, our gender, our location, our socioeconomic background, all of this data and it's fed into the algorithm which then spits out content that they think we would like.It costs nothing to go on Facebook or Instagram but the currency is our attention span.
The content that evokes very strong emotions, like fear, guilt, disgust, worry and very over simplified fast and easy to digest information, that gets the most attention and the algorithm knows that.So, it's going to take that content and boost it in other people's algorithms hoping that they're going to stay on the planform longer as well.
Jaramillo says mis-influencers will gain a large following by propagating unreliable food and nutrition information and popularity gives the illusion of expertise which they’ll use to sell their products.For more on the Food Truth Project visit thefoodtruthproject.com.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Source : Farmscape.ca