After a lot of pressure from s, YouTube announced this Wednesday, 29, that it will remove anti-vaccination videos from its platform. The Google subsidiary had already been carrying out some protectionist measures regarding misinformation about COVID-19, but it has once and for all thickened the broth for the disseminators of fake news.
In a note published through the website's official blog, YouTube comments that it is expanding policies on medical misinformation through a series of new guidelines on videos shared on the topic of vaccination. Since October, more than 130 videos have been removed that violated company policies in some way.
“In particular, we remove videos with false claims that approved vaccines are dangerous, cause chronic health damage and do not reduce the chances of transmitting / contracting diseases or content with misinformation about the substances contained in these immunizers. This includes content with false information, which says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track who got them. In addition to specific routine immunizations (such as measles and hepatitis B), our policies also apply to general vaccine statements.”
Dr. Garth Graham, Director of Public Health and Partnerships at YouTube
Channels or profiles that publish anti-vaccination videos or spread any kind of false news about immunizers will be notified and will have their s removed. The rule was defined by the internal team, together with the of health authorities.
If the shares false data about chemical components that cause harm to the population, greater risks of contracting other pathologies, lack of effectiveness and the like, the will be suspended for a week, but it may be permanently banned from the site if more videos are posted on a website. time span of 90 days.
YouTube also revealed that it will not be authoritative about any video that mentions vaccines. Statements, personal testimonials, informative and/or explanatory content about the history of this technology will not be affected in any way.
Fortunately, the platform seems to be taking good steps to contain the conspiracy and denialist wave that attacks global vaccination. Other social networks, however, are not so engaged in stopping this situation and can become possible focuses of sharing lies.
YouTube also points out that the blocking of anti-vaccination videos starts today, but that it will take some time before the site is able to process the new guidelines and act more incisively in this type of content.
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Sources: YouTube, Reuters, Yahoo! News
