YouTube removes disinformation videos on all vaccines | Youtube

YouTube must remove videos that spread misinformation about all vaccines as it intensifies crackdown on harmful content posted during the coronavirus pandemic.

From Wednesday, the video streaming site, who has already banned Covid jab lies, will remove content claiming that an approved vaccine is dangerous and causes chronic health problems. Under previous guidelines, the platform has downgraded – effectively hiding from view – videos that spread misinformation about non-Covid vaccines or encourage reluctance to be vaccinated.

Last year, YouTube implemented a ban on disinformation videos about the Covid vaccine, which has led to the removal of 130,000 content since then. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has removed a total of 1 million videos to spread general lies about Covid since the start of the pandemic.

Matt Halprin, global head of trust and security at YouTube, said vaccine misinformation was a global problem and had spilled over into the spread of falsehoods about Covid jabs.

“Misinformation about vaccines is popping up all over the world, it’s popping up in all countries and cultures,” he said.

Halprin added that the lies surrounding the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which has been wrongly attributed to the origin of autism, was an example of the misinformation YouTube will target.

“There are still a lot of challenges around MMR and people are wondering if it causes autism. And as we know, the science is very stable that vaccines don’t cause autism, ”he said.

Halprin said the ban would also apply, for example, to content claiming vaccines cause cancer, infertility or contain microchips, the latter having gained prominence as a lie on Covid jabs.

In 2019, a large study confirmed that there was no link between autism and MMR, following a pre-Covid upsurge in vaccine skepticism fueled by social media and anti-government populism. An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, published by the American College of Physicians, found “no support for the hypothesis of an increased risk of autism after MMR vaccination in an unselected national population of ‘Danish children’.

Halprin said the new guidelines would still allow personal testimony about vaccine-taking, discussion of immunization policies, and references to historical failures of immunization programs, as long as the content does not include general false information or do not encourage hesitation vis-à-vis vaccines. In addition to applying to lies about vaccines against specific diseases such as hepatitis, the guidelines will apply to general statements about vaccines that are considered misleading.

On Wednesday, a search under the terms “autism MMR vaccine” produced a results page containing rebuttals of any connection between the vaccine and autism, including a video titled “Vaccines and Autism: How the Myth Began.” However, the page also includes a TV interview with actor Robert De Niro in which he states that Vaxxed, a documentary directed by Andrew Wakefield – one of the key figures in promoting the discredited links between MMR and autism – is a film which “people should see”. De Niro was interviewed in 2016 after his Tribeca Film Festival withdrew a screening of Vaxxed following a backlash against the film.

YouTube’s decision follows a Facebook decision last year to remove false claims about Covid vaccines once they have been debunked by public health experts.