YouTube announced the ban of many anti-vaccine activists from the platform, including well-known American politicians such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Also warns that will remove all videos containing fake vaccine news from YouTube, specifying the misinformationions that will no longer be tolerated.
YouTube removes fake vaccine news
In addition to banning the accounts of antivaccinisti, in the YouTube blog post he explained what news he will no longer tolerate on the platform. That contradict scientific evidence without any evidence in support and therefore do not fall within the freedom of speech provided on YouTube. The videos will then be deleted that:
- claim that vaccines they do not reduce the risk of transmission or the contraction of the disease
- contain fake news about components vaccines
- claim vaccines can cause autism, cancer or infertility
- claim that vaccines inject a chip to check who gets vaccinated.
The platform had already taken similar measures regarding vaccines for Covid-19 but now extends the same restrictions to No-Vax of all kinds. The company, owned by Google, explains that “Today’s policy update is an important step to tackle vaccine and health misinformation on our platform. And we will continue to invest across the board ”.
For years, fake news experts had warned that disinformation on social media often leads to the so-called “vaccination hesitation“, Which lowers the adhesion rate to the vaccine. YouTube said it removed 130,000 videos in the last year with fake news about Covid-19. But he didn’t do it with videos that showed skepticism about vaccines in general. In fact it only removed the videos from the search results and promoted videos of experts and health institutions.
From today, however, disinformation on vaccines is banned from the platform: no no-vax on YouTube.