YouTube Bans Anti-COVID Vaccine Videos
TECHDIGEST – Video-sharing giant, YouTube, says it would remove videos that falsely claim approved COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous.
It will also remove false claims about routine immunizations for measles, Hepatitis B and other diseases.
YouTube has already banned posts that spread false myths around coronavirus treatments, including ones that share inaccurate claims about Covid-19 vaccines shown to be safe.
But the Google-owned site said its concerns about the spread of medical conspiracy theories went beyond the pandemic, as false claims about coronavirus vaccine has extended into misinformation about vaccines in general.
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“We’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the World Health Organization.”
These would include cases where vloggers have falsely claimed that approved vaccines do not work, or wrongly linked them to chronic health effects like autism, cancer, infertility and others.
However, it stressed there would be exceptions to the new guidelines, with personal testimonials of negative experiences with vaccines still allowed, so long as “the channel doesn’t show a pattern of promoting vaccine hesitancy.”
YouTube said it had removed more than 130,000 videos since last year for violating its COVID-19 vaccine policies.
Earlier this month, Facebook launched a renewed effort to tackle extremist and conspiracy groups, beginning by taking down a German network spreading Covid misinformation.
