YouTube is banning all vaccine misinformation. Not just COVID-19, all of it

Well, it’s official. 693,000 deaths later, YouTube is officially banning all content containing vaccine misinformation. This doesn’t just apply to just COVID-19 vaccines, any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines are dangerous or ineffective will also be banned.

So what’s allowed and what isn’t? Well, for starters, any content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are harmful and cause chronic health effects, as well as misinformation about the ingredients in vaccines, will be removed.

On the other hand, YouTube “will continue to allow content about vaccine policies, new vaccine trials and historical vaccine successes or failures.” Videos that “condemn, dispute, or satirize misinformation” that violates YouTube’s policies are also acceptable.

Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety, told The Washington Post:

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“We’ll remove claims that vaccines are dangerous or cause a lot of health effects, that vaccines cause autism, cancer, infertility or contain microchips”

As a result of this new policy, YouTube is removing content associated with prominent anti-vaccine activists such as Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom experts say is partly to blame for contributing to the slowdown in vaccination rates in the country.

YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all cracked down on misinformation about COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. YouTube says it has removed over 130,000 videos that violated its rules and over a million videos that contained misinformation about the coronavirus.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.