Illustration by Grayson Blackmon and Alex Castro / The Verge
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the big social platforms have generally been quicker than usual to intervene in the spread of misinformation. We’ve seen Facebook, Google, and Twitter add various labels, warnings, and links to high-quality news sources and public health organizations. And for the most part, the dumbest theories about the novel coronavirus have not reached huge scale — unless the theory was suggested by the president of the United States, in which case, well.
But some cracks are beginning to show. In February, a set of bizarre and almost incomprehensible theories began to spread on YouTube and Facebook alleging that 5G cellular networks had played a role in spreading the virus. And last week, we saw the emergence of…