COVID-19 Vaccine: YouTube Bans All Misinforming Content

Video sharing and social media platform, YouTube has announced on Wednesday that it won’t allow videos that claim vaccines approved by health authorities are dangerous or don’t work.

YouTube in a new attempt to control the flow of anti-vaccine misinformation is also banning prominent anti-vaccine accounts, including Joseph Mercola’s channel and the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-linked Children’s Defense Fund.

YouTube said in October 2020 that it will remove videos that pushed misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines. The new policy expands to block misinformation around other vaccines, including the flu shot, the HPV vaccine, and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Videos that inaccurately claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism or that the flu shot causes infertility, for example, will not be allowed under the new policy.

The guidelines said that the platform will still allow videos that include people sharing their personal experiences with vaccination. It’ll remove that content if the channels they’re on “demonstrate a pattern of promoting vaccine misinformation.” It will also allow videos with information violating the policy if that video includes other contexts, like statements from medical experts.

YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety, Matt Halprin confirmed to The Washington Post that YouTube expanded its vaccine policies after noting that misinformation around all vaccines could contribute to mistrust around the COVID-19 vaccine.