Foute informatie op sociale media

• A lot of medical misinformation circulates on the Internet – especially social media. During the corona crisis, this became an acute and prominent problem.
• Countering medical misinformation can be done with debunking (refuting misinformation with fact checks) and prebunking (warning people about misinformation and teaching them to recognize it).
• Research shows that debunking helps correct misconceptions created by misinformation, although the effect is limited.
• Although this is sometimes suggested, it is not true that corrections or factchecks actually cause misconceptions to be reinforced.
• Prebunking is also effective, although it can also cause people to distrust reliable information as well.

Conflict of interest and financial support: the ICMJE form provided by the author is available online along with the full text of this article.