Newsbreak Chats: Why disinformation and health are a deadly combo

MANILA, Philippines – When health is at stake, it’s not unusual to exhaust all means to find the right cure or way to address an existing medical issue.

Unfortunately, there are groups and individuals who take advantage of people’s desperation to get better. And they do this through disinformation about various health claims online.

On Thursday, Rappler technology editor Gelo Gonzales sits down with researcher Lorenz Pasion and campus journalist Jerry Yubal to discuss their reports on how disinformation and health intertwine dangerously and manifest through unverified products online.

Yubal, a recipient of the Aries Rufo Journalism Fellowship, wrote an investigative report on how TikTok has become the new marketplace for unregistered and unverified health products. Pasion, also a fact-checker for Rappler, dissected the complicity of Facebook in the spread of advertisements about health products that peddle false cures.

Read their reports:

• How TikTok spreads false cures, false hopes
• How Facebook ads let foreign-managed health products spread, putting Filipinos at risk

How can these platforms help prevent further damage? Watch the discussion live on Thursday, May 2! – Rappler.com

Watch other Newsbreak Chats episodes in 2024:

• How gov’t officials, big operators conspired vs fisherfolk
• Uncovering the lavish world of Apollo Quiboloy
• What it’s like to be a bike commuter in Metro Manila
• Faith and People Power
• Should Rodrigo Duterte be afraid of the Int’l Criminal Court?
• Charter change at the center of the Duterte-Marcos war
• Why Filipinos turn to sugar dating
• Martin Romualdez’s expanding power