Auditing e-commerce platforms for algorithmically curated vaccine misinformation

Abstract

There is a growing concern that e-commerce platforms are amplifying vaccine-misinformation. To investigate, we conduct two-sets of algorithmic audits for vaccine misinformation on the search and recommendation algorithms of Amazon-world's leading e-retailer. First, we systematically audit search-results belonging to vaccine-related search-queries without logging into the platform- unpersonalized audits. We fnd 10.47% of search-results promote misinformative health products.We also observe ranking-bias, with Amazon ranking misinformative search-results higher than debunking search-results. Next, we analyze the efects of personalization due to account-history, where history is built progressively by performing various real-world user-actions, such as clicking a product. We fnd evidence of flter-bubble efect in Amazon's recommendations; accounts performing actions on misinformative products are presented with more misinformation compared to accounts performing actions on neutral and debunking products. Interestingly, once user clicks on a misinformative product, homepage recommendations become more contaminated compared to when user shows an intention to buy that product.