The fight against false information about vaccines has reached its highest point during the COVID-19 pandemic. Disinformation has spread rapidly across the web, especially through social media, and major platforms have taken strong measures to combat it. For this reason, YouTube goes one step further and now prohibits all publications with anti-vaccine content .
This means that YouTube will no longer only remove videos with false information about COVID-19 vaccines, but also of all others that are approved by local health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) . To achieve this, the Google platform adds new guidelines on vaccines to its medical disinformation policies.
YouTube ensures that only during the last year it eliminated more than 130 thousand videos that violated policies related to vaccines for COVID-19. But now it intends to expand the scope of its rules to attack the distribution of anti-vaccine content in general, which is still available to millions of people on a daily basis.
YouTube finally tightens its measures against the anti-vaccine movement
From now on, YouTube will remove all posts that, in one way or another, promote deceptive content related to all approved vaccines . For example:
False accusations that they are dangerous and cause chronic health effects such as autism, cancer and infertility Claims that they do not reduce the spread and transmission of diseases False information about the content of vaccines , such as the inclusion of substances that allow tracking of inoculated people. “Our policies not only cover specific routine vaccines, such as those for Measles and Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines,” they said from YouTube.
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash
What content on the subject can be published?
From the platform they explained that there are contents related to vaccines that can continue to be published. Exceptions to the ban are videos that talk about “vaccination policies, new vaccine trials, and historical vaccine successes or failures” .
YouTube will also allow clips to be shared where users share their own experiences with vaccines ; as long as they do not violate other community guidelines, or are not from channels whose publications present a pattern that raises doubts about vaccination.
It is worth noting that this new measure to combat all misinformation about vaccines is not the only one that YouTube has adopted. According to The Washington Post, the platform has also suspended the channels of some of the most important anti-vaccine militants in the world . Some of the most resounding cases, at least in the United States, have been those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr -who was already expelled from Instagram for the same reason- and Joseph Mercola.
