#Is botsentinel legit professional#

Many messages passed along to me claimed to have cures heard from a friend of a friend, or a friend of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, or a health practitioner. According to Bot Sentinel, a site that uses machine learning to identify potential social media bots, on March 26 alone there were 828 incidents of trending tweets using the hashtag #coronavirus from potential bot accounts (and nearly twice that many if you count #COVID19 and #Coronavirus as well). Unfortunately, stories from vague, unreliable sources that are often seen on social media - or worse, forwarded from distant relatives or friends on these platforms - definitely need to be taken with skepticism. Trying to distill truth from opinion can be more difficult than it sounds in some major news outlet sources, but they can also be a good resource when checked and confirmed against what other outlets are saying. Step two is to double-check against other trusted news outlets and always look for the source of information. Step one is to use a reputable, often cited or primary news outlet, which should always provide specific sources for the information they report. The internet is an almost infinite source of knowledge on any subject, but it can also be a wellspring of hoaxes, half-truths and what our president aptly calls вЂњfake news.вЂќ In this extraordinary time, it is more important than ever to sift for the truth, especially as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic.Д«ut how do we know what is true and what is deception, when even the young and tech savvy among us are duped into falsehoods, such as being able to flush the coronavirus away with a glass of warm water? Or when someone with thousands of Instagram followers promotes silver as a COVID-19 cure? Or when even our president spreads false information during official coronavirus briefings? How can we know the truth in this overwhelming landscape of information? Older relatives insisted I drink malodorous herbal soups after reading on these sites that they had healing properties. These queries came from all age groups, from teenagers to retirees, each sincerely believing what they had read on Facebook, WeChat and other social networking sites. I was soon inundated with questions and advice about different herbs, vitamins, essential oils and even alcohol as treatments or preventatives for COVID-19 infections.

#Is botsentinel legit professional#

This 32-year-old, college-educated professional had fallen for the same trick. Thinking only older adults might be susceptible to this kind of sham reporting, I was surprised to receive the same message from a friend my age. When I asked my 70-year-old father where he got this information, he told me he saw it on Facebook. Healthy people can be asymptomatic yet still be carriers of the virus and spread it. The information is not just wrong it is also potentially dangerous. As a hospital-based internal medicine physician, I have had patients sick with COVID-19 who had enough lung reserve to pass the 10-second test. My dad recently forwarded me a message that said if you could hold your breath for 10 seconds, you were proven not to be infected by the novel coronavirus.