YouTube has announced a ban on vaccine misinformation and along with it, terminated the accounts of several anti-vaxxer influencers. Anti-vaccine activists Robert F Kennedy and Joseph Mercola are among those who have gotten the boot.
In a blog post on Wednesday titled, Managing harmful vaccine content on YouTube, the social media platform cited ‘the need to remove egregious harmful content’.
The false content ‘alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed’, YouTube wrote.
Kennedy, a former senator and lawyer, pushed the unfounded theory that vaccines cause autism. Mercola, an osteopathic physician, has promoted alternative therapies to vaccines.
Anti-vaxxers have grown in prominence on YouTube for more than a decade and even pushed vaccine advocates off the Google-owned platform.
‘It has been incredibly frustrating to try and share good, science-based information about vaccines on YouTube, only to have the algorithms then suggest anti-vaccine content to our viewers,’ Erica DeWald, communications director of the nonprofit Vaccinate Your Family, told NBC News.
‘We’re hopeful this is a positive step toward ensuring people have access to real information about vaccines and will signal other social media companies to follow suit.’
YouTube has removed 130,000 videos violating its Covid-19 vaccine policies since last year.
The platform already had a policy prohibiting misinformation around coronavirus vaccines, and its new ban targets similar content on jabs in general.
‘We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with Covid-19 to other vaccines,’ the post stated.
YouTube’s new ban mirrors as similar policy by Facebook in February.
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