“Lately I was really congestioned, so I tried to put cloves of garlic in my nostrils,” says a smile and pods in the nose a tiktoy with Quebec accent. “Darkness will get rid of all diseases and therefore all parasites and will also restore a balance in the immune system and repair your cells,” promises a young man avoit in his sofa before insuring, the blasé air of a professor sure of him: “It is not Bullshit!”
On social networks, health has become a playground where anyone improvises Pseudo-Médecin. A problem, while users are often young, especially on Tiktok, where 41 % of users are between 13 and 24 years old According to a Statista Analysis. The hazardous “health tips” made by these influencers affect this public sometimes still very naive and have risks incurred that can prove serious, even fatal. The moderation of these platforms being deficient, the misinformators are very rarely worried.
Force them to reveal the consequences of their advice
The situation concerns and unworthy of many doctors. Some are trying to act by creating information accounts. But others favor more … offensive methods. This is the case of Reagjir, a union of young doctors who launched an operation aimed at “forcing” tiktors to reveal the sometimes dramatic consequences of their recommendations. For this, no use of force, but of Deepfake, an artificial intelligence technology which allows to manipulate the faces and the voice, in order to return against them the videos of these apprentice experts in health. “This campaign aims to highlight and fight this worrying phenomenon, while 94 % of 16-30 year olds use at least one social network to learn, according to a Ipsos survey published in 2022“explains Doctor Raphaël Dachicourt, president of the Reagjir union.
The operation, called “Healthbuster”, consists in taking up the original videos of influencers, then transforming their speech. On the tiktok @ accountHealthbuster5 Launched by the union, the influencer who recommended inserting cloves of garlic in the nose now explains that she suffers from an infection. And the tiktokeur who praised the merits of turpentine recognizes that he should never have given this advice since the ingestion of petrol or turpentine oil can be fatal. Each video ends with the appearance of a doctor who explains that he used the Deepfake in order to alert the risks involved and recalls that health professionals must be listened to, the only ones authorized to provide medical advice, and not strangers without any skill in the matter.
“The idea is to touch the youngest who grew up with social networks -like us, young doctors -, but who are more distant from the care system, since they are generally healthy and less need to consult health professionals, explains Dr. Dachicourt. In addition, if people have always been given to the health councils they hear on the right and on the left, the difference with social networks is that you have a simple word of way. His ideas, at hermetic informational bubbles, echo chambers that are self-employed because of algorithms that promote popularity rather than reliable scientific and medical standards “.
A few thousand views against millions
To carry out their campaign, the union’s doctors began by exploring Tiktok to identify the most popular medical advice. “Then we selected the content that seemed to us the most dangerous,” said Dr. Dachicourt. Ten videos were then published on the @Healthbuster5 account. Online for almost two weeks, they have collected just over 2,000 views in all. A limited success, since it is enough to browse Tiktok with the keyword “health” to note that the most popular medical disinformation videos combine hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes even millions.
“The more we will get views and the better it will be, but we are not intended to become” health influencers “, our goal is to alert and transmit a simple message: it is better to trust a healthcare professional rather than following the advice of an average person on social networks”, explains the president of Reagjir, who considers that the niche “serious health influencers” Ohydoc Or To be or not toubib.
Ethical and legal debate
Combating medical disinformation on social networks is a real issue. But how far can health professionals go? Reagjir’s campaign opens a debate between the necessary fight against harmful advice and respect for the rights of people. The use of Deepfake, in particular, raises ethical and legal questions, since the faces of pinned influencers are used without their consent.
“It is for this reason that we have selected the advice which is really dangerous for health, such as the video on the turpentine in which the influencer advises to take care of it and minimizes side effects, while turpentine is a poison and that the danger is extreme,” says Dr. Dachicourt. According to him, it is the benefit-risk report that awarded. “And we made sure that everything was in accordance with European law and regulation,” he said. Each video also displays an explicit banner warning of the use of artificial intelligence. But is it enough?
Not so sure, according to Maître Charles Emmanuel Sousse, lawyer at the Paris bar (and also lawyer for L’Express). “It is possible that this approach is not condemned for identity theft, but there could be a problem of image rights,” he analyzes. And it is limited ethically “. The Reagjir union assumes. “Not our role is also to alert on the dangers, very real, even if it means pointing the finger at the person who gives these advice? Our primary goal is not to harm these influencers, but to alert to these problems,” retorts Dr. Dachicourt.
How far can we go to denounce these dangers? The question arises. “If this union is attacked in justice, there would be a legitimate debate so that the judges determine the point of balance between the need to alert on a subject of general interest and freedom of expression on the one hand, and the protection of the rights of individuals – of their image in this case – on the other,” continues Maître Sousse. The legal debate is similar to that posed during the outing operations of homosexual political figures who have engaged against the law of homosexuals. “Jurisprudence in the matter has established that it was justified to infringe privacy when this made it possible to defend subjects of general interest,” he recalls.
No complaints were filed. In the meantime, false information continues to swarm on social networks. And the situation may not improve, since the leaders of the main platforms all announced, shortly after the election of American president Donald Trump, that they were going to limit, replace or even Delete their moderation tools In order to promote “freedom of expression”. For disinformators, the way is now free, or almost.
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