Matthew Facciani

Claude was already gaining ground due to its performance, but Anthropic standing up to protect their safeguards has clearly resonated with a wide audience.

Claude is now the top productivity app, taking over ChatGPT.

Robert F Kennedy Jr: 1 year of failure In his first speech as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F Kennedy Jr laid out a plan to restore trust. The COVID-19 pandemic saw public faith in Federal health...

“Kennedy’s record, 1 year in, has been a failure by most measures, especially his own”
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Today I’ll be speaking at #SPSP2026! I’ll be on the panel covering misinformation and discussing my research on cross cultural media literacy tools.

The Hidden Social Forces Behind Misinformation

It was such a pleasure to be on the Misguided podcast talking about the hidden social forces of misinformation with @matthewfacciani.bsky.social !

open.spotify.com/episode/42rz...

Opinion | I Grew Up Unvaccinated. Now I’m an Immunologist.

This is such a powerful and important piece by @sciencewhizliz.bsky.social about growing up unvaccinated, becoming an immunologist, and deeply understanding how to talk to people about vaccines.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/o...

Anthropic says Pentagon's "final offer" is unacceptable The company is facing a Friday night deadline to comply or face potentially huge consequences.

“The contract language we received overnight from the Department of War made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons”
www.axios.com/2026/02/26/a...

The Hidden Social Forces Behind Misinformation Cecilie Steenbuch-Traberg joins me to discuss how social context shapes misinformation susceptibility, how to make media literacy games for today's digital age, and the impact of AI on information.

Most misinformation games reach people who already care. What about everyone else? Great conversation with Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg about reaching new audiences, the social forces that make us vulnerable, and why a murder mystery might be the future of media literacy. 🎙️

The Next Era of Vaccine Governance The way things were isn’t the way things can be anymore

"We need people who can hold two truths at once:

The systems we had were imperfect.
Abandoning them entirely is dangerous.
Between those two truths is where building must take place."
communityimmunity.substack.com/p/the-next-e...

haha that's great! I'm glad it's useful. And please suggest my book to be added in your library! I would love to see it in more libraries.

That’s why I share summaries on articles on my social media! They are typically written for niche audiences

KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: The Public’s Views on Measles Outbreaks and Misinformation | KFF This poll looks at awareness and concern over the outbreak of measles in the U.S. and finds that a growing share of adults is encountering false claims about the measles vaccines, but many are uncerta...

Meanwhile:
"confidence in the safety of MMR vaccines is lower among Republican and Republican-leaning parents, with about three in ten (31%) expressing a lack of confidence in the safety of MMR vaccines"
www.kff.org/health-infor...

Online prediction markets are already worth billions, and continue to grow rapidly with full support of the current administration. You can bet on all kinds of things, including how many measles cases there will be in the US this year.

A White House Staffer Appears to Run Massive Pro-Trump X Account A popular right-wing account that called a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes "a masterpiece" appears to be run by a White House staffer, according to records reviewed by WIRED.

"Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies."
www.wired.com/story/a-whit...

A similar dynamic affects science communicators and public health advocates who share their expertise online. Because they are visible and accessible, they can become convenient avatars for broader frustrations with policies and institutions they did not design or control.

It’s not your doctor’s fault that healthcare is so expensive, but they may be your most visible (and sometimes only) point of contact with the broader healthcare system.

It’s disheartening that doctors and scientists often become proxy targets for broader distrust and resentment toward institutions that have very real problems.

Takeaways from AP's report on the business interests of Trump's surgeon general pick President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next U.S. surgeon general has repeatedly said the nation’s medical and food systems are corrupted by special interests and people out to make a profit at the ex...

Source:
apnews.com/article/surg...

It remains unclear how much money Trump’s Surgeon General nominee, Casey Means, made from affiliate marketing and wellness company partnerships, but reporting shows she did not regularly disclose those affiliations when promoting such products.

The test of open dialogue In the face of Jay Bhattacharya as the new CDC Director

"It is one thing to call for open dialogue when you feel excluded. It is another thing to protect it when you are in charge."
yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-test-o...

The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents | Fortune Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations “screwed up” giving students access to so much technology: “I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”

“Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one”
fortune.com/2026/02/21/l...

Pa., N.J. and 13 other states sue Trump administration over changes to vaccine schedule The lawsuit asks the court to nullify the CDC's decision to reduce the number of immunizations that are recommended for children.

A coalition of Democratic officials from 15 states is suing RFK Jr & Trump over changes to federal childhood vaccine recommendations and the restructuring of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, seeking to reverse both actions.
www.phillyvoice.com/pennsylvania...

US military leaders pressure Anthropic to bend Claude safeguards Anthropic presents itself as most safety-forward AI firm and Pentagon has threatened penalties if it does not yield

Anthropic does not want its AI systems to be used for mass surveillance or for autonomous weapons that can kill people without human control. The US has threatened penalties if the company does not remove their safeguards.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

In an ecosystem engineered to hijack our attention, sometimes the best thing to do is simply closing the app and going outside!

We covered everything from the psychology of why false information sticks to the broader structural and platform-level forces that make today’s information environment so difficult to navigate.

Why We Believe Misinformation and How We Can Protect Ourselves Against it A recording from Matthew Facciani and Mike Nellis's live video

I had a great time talking with @mikenellis.bsky.social about why we believe misinformation, and what we can actually do about it.
matthewfacciani.substack.com/p/why-we-bel...

Elected officials’ Online Sharing of Misinformation: Institutional and Ideological Checks Elected officials occupy privileged positions in public communication about important topics – roles that extend to the digital world. In the same way that public officials stand to lead constructi...

A new analysis of ~500,000 Facebook posts from U.S. state legislators finds that Republican lawmakers are more likely to share content with low factual accuracy. This tendency appears to be even more pronounced among those representing more conservative districts.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Peter Attia leaves CBS News contributor role amid fallout from Epstein files The wellness influencer's name appears frequently in a cache of Epstein files released by the Justice Department earlier this month.

CBS finally cuts ties with Peter Attia after weeks of public pressure.
www.nbcnews.com/business/med...

It also showed that AI chatbots using a combined strategy of correction and bypassing worked better than correction alone, reducing misinformation and increasing acceptance.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence Chatbots to Employ Bypassing and Correction Strategies for Addressing Misinformation About Contraceptive Use - Christopher Calabrese, Haoning Xue, Xinyu Zhang, Yoo J... We examined whether bypassing and combined (correction with bypassing) strategies delivered through artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can address contracept...

New study found that bypassing corrections (providing a positive and truthful statement instead of directly countering a negative or inaccurate one) was effective in Reddit conversations.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...