Social media bots often tweet fake health claims about cannabis: study

https://news.usc.edu/164317/cannabis-health-social-media-bots-fake-claims/

113 115 7 years ago

news.usc.edu

deith4• 7 years ago

You don't have to go and look on social media, just come here to HN and say "perhaps weed is not completely safe and we should research whether it could damage the brain" to get downvoted

kalium_xyz• 7 years ago

It always fascinates me how powerful the placebo effect is. If people believe false health claims they seem to become true health claims.

tayo42• 7 years ago

Something I read recently is that anti depressants are less effective since their initial release, mostly because of placebo wearing off.

JaumeGreen2• 7 years ago

There's lots of pro-cannabis and pro-LSD comments everywhere. My cynical view is that the "power" wants us all sedated, and it's investing its media to promote the "new" batch of drugs to get another generation hooked up.

I do think that there are probably quite beneficial uses of drugs, but probably not in a ludic way as most people prefer to use them.

pushpop2• 7 years ago

I share some of your cynicism but I think the “sedated” comment is a massive leap to make. However I do sometimes wonder if there has been a push from tobacco manufacturers as a way to booster profits now that smoking has fallen out of vogue. Admittedly I’ve done zero research to back up this suspicion.

Personally I do think laxer drug laws are a good thing. Those that want to get high will always find a way so it’s better to regulate the market than push it underground.

swiley• 7 years ago

My first thought when I saw this was of all the people and corporations investing in CBD and whatnot. Most corporations seem to be using adtech and social media (which are really the same) to perform mass manipulation. When that’s combined with all the crazy financial tools people can make a lot of money.

I think if lawmakers actually wanted people using drugs for the effects then drugs would be legal, I would argue they instead want the ability to arrest and incarcerate people at will.

pjc50• 7 years ago

Not really consistent with it all being illegal, is it?

fiblye• 7 years ago

I think at least with regards to HN, it's that the average user is, just being honest, wealthy and from a very privileged background without too much lifetime difficulty. There's a disproportionate number of people here who can and did walk into Silicon Valley and said something along the lines of "give me 10 million dollars and I'll make a phone app", then have the free time and comfortable fall back to write a failure report about "their journey." I'm not saying that's all or even most of the people here, but it's a larger proportion compared to probably any other community on the internet.

I mention this because many of the strongest "let's decriminalize (or even legalize) all drugs" commenters have similar backgrounds. Comfy financial situation and room to experiment with the peace of mind knowing that they have people to help dust them off should they get a little sloppy with their drug use. These people can afford to take a week to enjoy an ayahuasca resort, follow it up with a beach vacation and a little MDMA, then return home to a daily bowl of weed to relax from their hard month of partying and pop a couple addies to get focused and pull an all-nighter on their new web app. They can financially and mentally afford to use drugs as mood and mental enhancers. Loads of people who aren't so comfortable use drugs to numb the rough edges of life. Having been on this site for over a decade, I've seen loads of comments that make many users here seem completely out of touch with what average people go through--many HN users on another plane of existence.

I think a considerable number of people who promote drugs everywhere have good intentions, but they don't really consider the effects for most people. The aspect of being locked up for drugs does do a lot to tarnish lives, but the mere act of having easily available mind-altering substances is also enough to ruin the lives of many.

scottlocklin4• 7 years ago

Certainly one of the things that gives me the creeps are the CBD quiosques freaking everywhere selling what amounts to CBD weed, CBD lotions, CBD potions, CBD whatever; I've seen them in airports, in tourist locations and in shopping malls. Mostly completely unpatronized, with a sullen presumably CBD anesthetized employee manning the desk. Just for the rent and employees we're talking something like a hundred millions a year in money flying out the window. To what end? Nobody is buying this shit (outside of tourist locations afaik). Someone is paying for it to happen.

It reminds me of when the Israeli spooks were selling toys in shopping malls in 2001 (rounded up after 911 and memory holed)[1]. Maybe it's just RJR ramping up to sell actual weed everywhere, but it sure is creepy.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel...

susijdjdjxa• 7 years ago

LSD is sedating? Spoken like someone who never tried LSD.

shkkmo3• 7 years ago

At the federal level, weed is still classified as schedule 1. The federal government's stance has served to place severe restrictions on exactly the sort of research you seem to be calling for.

There is certainly some evidence for health and even psychological risks, but none that I am aware of for "brain damage", which is why you are likely to be downvoted.

0x8BADF00D• 7 years ago

I have smoked weed heavily in my late 20s, ingested many types of edibles, topicals, etc. I am certainly not as sharp as I used to be. It can cause brain damage indirectly due to changes in your cardiovascular system. It can mimic a temporary sort of vascular dementia, as well as increase your blood pressure to very unsafe levels. Weed can also reduce the amount of grey matter in your orbitofrontal cortex. Not to mention the somewhat bizarre cartoon-like images you see on high doses of edibles. These images can fracture your mind if you see them enough. The risks are very real, and trying to downplay them or censor them is extremely irresponsible.

deith4• 7 years ago

US is not the only country in the world, and there have been studies linking teenage use to psychosis and schizophrenia

thrower123• 7 years ago

You get this with any kind of health-related opinion, on any forum. Just look at anything diet-related, and watch the people spouting vegetarian and vegan propaganda come out of the woodwork.

Health cults have taken over. My theory is that so many people feel powerless in many aspects of their lives, and they fall back on diet and exercise and snake-oil supplements as one corner of life they can over-compensate on.

kortex2• 7 years ago

Yes, but I don't think it's just "health cults". Locus of control and learned helplessness are very powerful drivers. If you have a person that has derived benefit from an intervention, placebo or otherwise, and you challenge that mental model, you cause a mighty cognitive dissonance in their brain. That challenge must be "dealt with", the usual outlet being arguments over the internet.

KingMachiavelli• 7 years ago

You'll always have to ignore large categorizations such as safe or harmful anyway, no reasonable person is saying cannabis is as safe as air (well actually some air might be worse) rather they are saying that since society is perfectly fine and acomidating of worse substances such as alcohol and tobacco it makes no sense to prohibit cannabis much less criminalize it.

catalogia5• 7 years ago

no reasonable person is saying cannabis is as safe as air (well actually some air might be worse)

Maybe none of them are reasonable, but there sure are a lot of them. I've met a lot of people who think consuming cannabis is more healthy than not consuming it. I think this is becoming a more popular viewpoint and might even become a mainstream belief in a few years.

yodsanklai• 7 years ago

Often nuanced points of view are those that get you criticised the most.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

A nuanced point of view is incompatible with the ideology of the extremists at both ends of whatever the issue is so you have twice as people mashing the "make the wrongthink go away" button

lemiffe• 7 years ago

The worry is that all the online chatter about cannabis’s beneficial qualities will have offline consequences, ultimately influencing attitudes and behaviors, Allem said

I doubt this is a realistic consequence... I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot? I presume most people would be able to tell bot-controlled Twitter accounts from friends and legitimate followers.

I think the study should have included impact from those tweets, such as number of likes, retweets, quotes, and replies, as well as count of human followers.

pushpop2• 7 years ago

You’re right that further research is required here but it’s also worth barring in mind that there is already a good body of evidence available that supports the power of social media bot accounts have public opinion. I mean this isn’t the first story like this to break in recent years ;)

imiric• 7 years ago

I doubt this is a realistic consequence... I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot?

I'm not sure if you're serious, but misinformation in general is a big global concern that has tangible, unexpected and sometimes coordinated effects on political and social systems worldwide.

When misinformation becomes cheap to produce with software and easy to distribute via social media, and sophisticated enough to be indistinguishable from a real person, a) it's very difficult for an outsider to know whether they're being misinformed, and b) does it really matter if it's a human or a bot spreading it at that point?

I'm not sure what the short term solutions to this are, as it's easy to fall into the regulations trap (and some certainly are needed), but in the long term we need better educated individuals with a healthy dose of skepticism to combat this.

hanniabu2• 7 years ago

I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot?

It certainly helped get Trump elected

DataWorker2• 7 years ago

Is there any actual evidence of this? I’ve heard that claim, but it seems like most trump voters were Republicans, not democrats who got duped by bots.

zo1• 7 years ago

To be fair, that "certain" fact is wildly disputed. It's like the political equivalent of "reefer madness" in that it's easy to throw around, yet hard to quantify or present as a valid case for/against.

I mean, look at the absolute circus a controversial point such as "how did Trump get elected" has caused in the US and even world-wide. We're nearing the next election and I would argue it's still no where near resolved. In fact, I'd argue it's caused a bigger divide than anything else precisely because it's so un-pinnable to being either true/false or good/bad.

saadmrb• 7 years ago

Cannabis and THC aren't particularly bad for you.

The addiction potential is low to none. Obviously, you shouldn’t get high and then drive or load ordinance onto fighter planes on an aircraft carrier, but the direct harm potential of THC is quantitatively lower than the risk you take when you climb a ladder or drive to the store.

shkkmo3• 7 years ago

The article seems quite happy to jump in and call these claims "false" rather than "unproven" or "unscientific".

Additionally, neither the abstract, nor the article bother to actually name the strength or statistical certainty of the effect.

Neither of these serve to give this article much credibility when talking about how to responsibly talk about science.

geff82• 7 years ago

Recently, a friend came to me with a list of all the health benefits that are attributed to cannabis. I sent him back a list of all the health benefits attributed to good old ginger - and they matched almost one to one. Health claims concerning cannabis are usually just for those who want to consume a drug and feel better about themselves.

catalogia5• 7 years ago

Maybe not the best example, ginger seems legitimately medicinal to me. I've not found anything better for settling an upset stomach than real ginger (not "ginger ale" soda pop.)

actuator3• 7 years ago

Ginger is actually considered as a medicinal herb and is an active ingredient in many traditional medicines across Asia. I think in South Asia ginger tea is considered a very good beverage for relief if you have common cold.

bromuro• 7 years ago

OP found a perfect example to show how cannabis share same of the benefits as ginger. So he’s actually suggesting his friend to get weed if he cannot take get ginger :)

fjabre3• 7 years ago

Can you blame them? Last time I checked ginger wasn't subjected to 70 years of war on drugs propaganda. Never heard of anyone thrown in jail for consuming ginger.

Maybe people want to consume a drug without being labeled and stereotyped by people who say all drugs are bad and that getting high is a sin.

actuator3• 7 years ago

Propogating false health claims doesn't help people either.

I can claim that good old whisky is the cure for cold if you are mountaineering in extreme climates, but it certainly isn't going to help anyone.

nyhc99• 7 years ago

I have to agree with this. If exaggerating health claims about a plant is what it takes to convince the country that you shouldn't be thrown in prison for choosing to consume that plant, then have at it.

The older generations will find it much harder to vote against legalization while they're rubbing CBD cream on their aching joints. If that's the trade-off, it's a good deal.

damnyou• 7 years ago

Ginger actually does have a lot of health benefits though?

soulofmischief7• 7 years ago

Wow, next you're going to tell me Aloe Vera is a scam, too.

avstrallen• 7 years ago

Are statements of the form "Social media bots often tweet fake claims about <insert more or less anything you like here>' really newsworthy? Asking for a friend who bought a course from Siraj Raval...

outime• 7 years ago

I do agree that cannabis health “benefits” are often exaggerated but this happens with any substance. Also, social media bots spam about many things all the time. Should we then talk about all the topics spam bots post about?

bertil• 7 years ago

Those bots are expensive and complicated to operate at scale. Some topics are there to make them look legitimate, others because you have large clients supporting a change in opinion and willing to spend social-media agencies to promote it — or discredit it with a ham-fisted campaign.

It’s hard to sort them apart but that example, for me, echoes a BBC documentary/sci-fi speculation from 10 years ago about cannabis legalisation and more generally licensing psycho-active molecules for entertainment purposes. The title was “If drugs were legal” or “When” as most specialists had little doubt this would happen soon.

Both cigarette and pharmaceutical companies came out as very ready for the idea, with teams dedicated to lobbying for it, of course, but marketing, products ready for the day. Overall, they were clear large players with established industrial assets and experience in large-scale distribution would completely take over.

They even speculated that some tests on new drugs were done without permissions. A couple of years later the “Bath salt” craze and the mention most of those were molecules no one had seen before also echoed quite loudly.

cneurotic• 7 years ago

There are so many complications when it comes to REALLY understanding the health effects of weed. The science is really tough, and underdeveloped.

One problem is that there are so many varietals, and so many different vehicles for administration (smoking, vaping, eating, tinctures, lotions, etc) — that make it hard to announce, globally, that "marijuana does X to your brain."

Really, the most we can say after a given experience is something like "Strain Y, when inhaled as a combustible, appears to show effect X."

Another problem is the weed that's available for experiments in the US. There is one — and only one — weed crop that the FDA will approve for clinical studies. From a farm at the University of Mississippi. (https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pot-monopoly-20140529-s...)

And according to a weed researcher I spoke to (Sue Sisley - https://medicalcannabis.com/about/faculty/suzanne-sisley/), that Mississippi weed is very low quality — aged, with a lot of stems, seeds, and adulterants.

None of this is to say that weed can't be beneficial.

But I'd argue that anyone making any global claims about weed's health benefits are, at the very least, overgeneralizing.

account734663• 7 years ago

> None of this is to say that weed can't be beneficial.

There might be a non-trivial impact of weed on climate change if weed consumers produce less kids which according to UNESCO is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint.

vasco• 7 years ago

It also reduces road traffic and all manner of queues.

1337biz• 7 years ago

Depending on which ideology you follow one could also make the case that this happens in first world nation that already have a problem with lower and lower birthrates.

superkuh• 7 years ago

Worst of these claims are the (almost literal) "snake oil" companies and sellers that are selling 10mg of CBD to people as a 'dose' and implying or telling them it is anything other than placebo at this level. All professional journal studies that have made claims about CBD do studies that use at least 300mg and more often 600mg as the absolute minimum dose and repeat this daily for weeks. Unfortunately 600mg of CBD (with the THC removed down to <0.5mg levels) is expensive. Literally multiple hundreds of dollars. At the typical dosages sold in headshops and the like CBD is a placebo. It is snake oil.

It doesn't even have an significant affinity for the CB1 receptors at reasonable 0.6g doses. The mechanism of action is actually through binding to the serotonin-1a autoreceptor, much like the atypical antidepressant buspirone.

This unregulated wild west of CBD and non-THC pot products is only going to backfire on the charlatans and ignorant users caught up in it. It's going to hurt the legalization movement.

throwaway1777• 7 years ago

What makes you think it needs to bind to cb1 receptors to be effective? We’re not trying to get high on cbd, we’re trying to achieve other results.

g00gler• 7 years ago

It drives me crazy that they sell CBD at gas stations. It’s not the same as the products I buy at the dispensary and is snake oil.

However, my medical cannabis packages don’t give that kind of dosage information.

I don’t have a high CBD product on hand but it typically says something like “1 dose is a [3|5] second inhalation” or 1mL of a tincture. The whole package typically includes less than 600mg CBD.

Are these studies for shrinking tumor growth? Could you provide links?

As an aside, I met some guys from a company in Colorado that sells pounds of high CBD flower by mail for around $130... can’t imagine that making RSO from their hemp would be hundreds of dollars a week.

fpgaminer2• 7 years ago

Unfortunately we don't have enough research to establish much of anything beyond the current FDA approved usage. However, that usage is 600mg/day for an average person (10mg/kg/day). So the claim of 600mg being the "absolute minimum dose" is absurd.

Plenty of studies have occurred at levels as low as 25mg/day and shown effects. The quality of those studies isn't great, but there aren't any good quality studies on CBD to begin with. But considering those poor quality studies together with the body of anecdotal evidence which suggests that CBD's anti-anxiety effects kick in between 15mg and 50mg, I'm inclined to believe that CBD is not a placebo at these levels.

My dose is between 5 and 10mg a day, and I can feel as little as 1mg (I'm hypersensitive to the stuff).

All of that said, I agree with you on your last point about charlatans. There's plenty of woo-woo and snake oil in the CBD "industry". But there are real benefits here that I wouldn't want drowned out.

markdown• 7 years ago

I can feel as little as 1mg (I'm hypersensitive to the stuff).

What gives you the confidence that this isn't the placebo affect at work?

frenchyatwork• 7 years ago

This unregulated wild west of CBD and non-THC pot products is only going to backfire on the charlatans

Hopefully, but don't get your hopes up. "Alternative medicine" is still very much alive.

Rescis• 7 years ago

My experience is mostly with epilepsy, but CBD at dosages of 25-100mg (varying on the intensity of the siezure) really does help better then any prescribed medication my partner has tried. It's not ridiculous to me that it's effect on other systems in your body we don't know much about could be significant.

I do agree though, regularily using 500-1000mg's a week gets expensive.

Digit-Al• 7 years ago

“We want the public to be aware of the difference between a demonstrated, scientifically backed piece of health information and claims that are simply made up.”

The problem is that many of those spreading these kind of messages are the type of people who are convinced that the entire medical industry (Big Pharma) are trying to make everybody ill so they can sell them expensive treatments and that they don't want to develop a cure from cannabis because they wouldn't be able to make money from that, or other such nonsense.

It's quite sad to see home many people swallow such bullshit.

I know a woman who was successfully treated for brain cancer and she is an anti-vaxxer and one of those who spreads memes about the medical industry wanting to keep everyone sick. I just sit there thinking "you're literally living proof that the medical industry is saving lives and yet you sit there at your keyboard insulting the very people responsible for saving your life."

IgorPartola4• 7 years ago

Well yeah. So long as the federal government keeps classifying cannabis as a tier 1 controlled substance (cocaine is tier 2), no research money will flow to academics to do the relevant research.

In the meantime, we will continue seeing claims like RSO curing all cancers and other diseases (http://www.trueactivist.com/this-is-the-cannabis-oil-recipe-...). Being able to research effects of cannabis is reason number umpteen to decriminalize/legalize it at the federal level.

drummer4• 7 years ago

The main component of RSO actually has been studied and proven to kill cancer. You need RSO with very high THC concentration. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1miGzTwK28U

IgorPartola4• 7 years ago

What kind of cancer? That’s like saying “RSO cures illness”. Fire cures cancer too I’d you apply it directly to just the cancer cells, but we can agree that setting a can we patient on fire isn’t exactly a worthwhile therapy. Also any actual sources aside from KillYourCancer.org? I am not saying RSO doesn’t work. Just that it has not been proven or disproven by anyone reputable.

dillonmckay• 7 years ago

So, Twitter should not be considered a reliable source of information, on its own?

seattle_spring2• 7 years ago

These comments highlight why I never feel like I fit in with other engineers.

soulofmischief7• 7 years ago

Yikes, I know what you mean. You've got engineers, and you've got hackers... Hackers place enormous emphasis on personal liberty and sovereignty. Sometimes I feel like a hacker in an engineer's body. At any rate, I looked through your comment history and I think we would get along fine. Got a point of contact?

Animats• 7 years ago

So who's bothering to run cannabis-promotion bots? There's no one dominant seller, so it doesn't make sense as advertising.

The full paper is paywalled ($24).

Social media bots often tweet fake health claims about cannabis: study

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