Today we’re going to explore how the internet has evolved to both democratize access to information, leading to incredible breakthroughs, and be a platform for spreading mass misinformation at rates and scales we’ve never seen before.

At times, the internet represents the best part of humanity on display. One country releases the genetic sequence of a virus that’s spreading globally and scientists around the world get to work creating a never-before-created vaccine using technology that has never been used to produce a vaccine before.

However, it also helped the spread of misinformation about that very vaccine, false information that is preventing almost 30% of the population in the United States from receiving it.

The business of fake news has been around for hundreds of years, but now Google’s display ad network allows for these sites to easily monetize the millions of eyeballs searching for answers, especially at an unprecedented time like we’re seeing during this ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. And the thing is… it doesn’t matter if that eyeball believes what they’re reading or if they’re reading it in disbelief. If that article is being talked about it’s making money.

So where do we go from here? That and more in today’s episode of Rocketship.fm

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