Amazon鈥檚 search algorithm gives preferential treatment to books that promote false claims about vaccines, according to research by 911爆料网 Ph.D. student Prerna Juneja and Assistant Professor Tanu Mitra.
Meanwhile, books that debunk health misinformation appear lower in Amazon鈥檚 search results, where they are less likely to be seen, the researchers wrote in a paper that was recently , the top annual conference on human-computer interaction.
In their paper, Juneja and Mitra noted that Amazon has faced criticism for not regulating health-related products on its platform. They conducted audits to determine how much health misinformation is present in Amazon鈥檚 recommendations and how the personalization of its search results affects the amount of misinformation users receive.
The researchers tested a list of 48 search terms on vaccine-related topics, such as 鈥渋mmunization鈥 and 鈥淢MR vaccine and autism鈥 over a 22-day period and found that products promoting misinformation consistently outperformed those that debunk false claims. Misinformative products performed especially well when results were sorted by certain filters 鈥 鈥渁verage customer reviews鈥 and 鈥減rice low to high.鈥
Juneja and Mitra used bots to build user histories and test whether Amazon pushes shoppers toward misinformation after they鈥檝e shown an interest. They found that after users click on misinformative products or place them in their carts, they are more likely to see similar items on their Amazon home pages, creating a misinformation feedback loop.
To combat misinformation on its platform, the researchers recommended several actions Amazon could take. Those include displaying informative links alongside the product listings, introducing bias indicators, and, in the long term, modifying its algorithms and policies to stop promoting misinformative books.
Read the , 鈥淎uditing E-Commerce Platforms for Algorithmically Curated Vaccine Misinformation,鈥 and reports on the research from the and , as well as Juneja's .