Skip to main content

Facebook, Google coronavirus surveys may soon predict outbreaks, researchers say

Data from surveys run on Facebook and Google could be used to track and even predict the spread of coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday that the survey would be expanding worldwide to gather more data for scientists.

Recommended Videos

Researchers have been running surveys on both the Facebook and Google platforms asking users to voluntarily answer questions about their symptoms, the symptoms of others in their household, and their demographic information. Carnegie Mellon says that millions of people responded to the surveys and provided them with invaluable data that could be used to estimate the real-time spread of the virus.

“I’m very happy with both the Facebook and Google survey results,” Ryan Tibshirani, co-leader of Carnegie Mellon’s Delphi COVID-19 Response Team and associate professor of statistics and machine learning, said in a statement. “They both have exceeded my expectations.”

The researchers are receiving around one million survey responses per week through Facebook; last week they received nearly 600,000 responses per day through Google Opinion Rewards and AdMob apps.

The results of the survey will be made publicly available through the COVIDcast and Data for Good websites, which show the percentage of people estimated to have symptoms on a map of the U.S.

One major finding from a preliminary analysis of the data is that self-reported coronavirus symptoms, like those submitted by the survey respondents, correlate closely to the levels of the disease found by testing. This means asking people to report their symptoms could be a viable, fast, and affordable way to roughly track the spread of the disease.

The researchers say that, in combination with other data sources such as confirmed test results and medical claims, survey data could be used to forecast cases up to several weeks in advance. This information could help hospitals and first responders to prepare for increases in patients in their region by anticipating how many new cases are likely to develop in a given area.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post on Monday about the importance of getting accurate data about coronavirus cases, saying that, “with a community of billions of people globally, Facebook can uniquely help researchers and health authorities get the information they need to respond to the outbreak and start planning for the recovery.”

Zuckerberg said Facebook was partnering with the University of Maryland to expand the survey to all its users across the globe, and that Carnegie Mellon researchers would work on an API to let other scientists access the results.

“We’re hopeful that this will help governments and public health officials around the world who might not otherwise have this kind of precise data to make decisions in the weeks and months ahead,” Zuckerberg wrote.

For the latest updates on the novel coronavirus outbreak, visit the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 page.

Digital Trends is keeping a close watch on the latest developments in COVID-19 treatment and prevention tech, and we’ll update this page continually as new information becomes available.
Coronavirus Testing Labs
Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more