YouTube bans anti-vaccine accounts
With the viralization of the content of anti-vaccine activists, the Google service announced today on its blog that it was banning activist accounts like those of Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Erin Elizabeth and Sherri Tenpenny.
This affects not only those users who go against the Covid-19 vaccines, but those who enact erroneous and unsubstantiated information so that people are not vaccinated against measles and many other diseases that have been tested over the years. As they have commented in this same post:
“Today’s policy update is an important step in addressing vaccine and health misinformation on our platform, and we will continue to invest across the board.”
Yes, publications on this video platform that have personal testimonies related to vaccines, essays on new vaccines and posts that show the historical development of these will be allowed. But, videos that enact no vaccination will be removed, and their users banned.
Social networks defend the health system
This new YouTube policy is more in line with the latest movements made by Twitter or social media by Mark Zuckerberg.
In the case of the blue bird service, in March it presented its own policy that would apply sanctions to those users who transmitted lies about Covid-19 and vaccines. But, in this case, they would give them a “truce” of 5 chances or “strikes” before applying said sanctions and censuring this person.
On your side, Facebook reported that it would remove any misinformation claims against vaccines, including that vaccine doses cause problems or diseases such as autism. Although, for the moment, the application of these policies is being somewhat lax, since there is a lot of erroneous information that still circulates through this social network.
However, this seems quite strange to us since in Instagram Yes, the measures are being more rigorous. A clear example of this is that the Facebook accounts of activists such as Dr. Mercola and Mr. Kennedy are still active. On the contrary, on Instagram the profile of Mr. Kennedy was suspended long ago.
Thanks to the virality offered by these types of social media services, and the connection between them, activist groups take advantage of their opportunities to deceive people. Fortunately, there are groups of anti-disinformation researchers working against this. One of them is the Center to Counter Digital Hate, which published research showing a group of 12 persons very important in charge of transmitting the 65% of all messages against vaccines on social media. Dr. Mercola, of whom we have already told you a little above, occupied the first place within this group called “The Disinformation Dozen.”
