On Wednesday, YouTube announced that they would be expanding their “medical misinformation policies” with new guidelines relating to the subject of vaccines.
“Crafting policy around medical misinformation comes charged with inherent challenges and tradeoffs. Scientific understanding evolves as new research emerges, and firsthand, personal experience regularly plays a powerful role in online discourse,” YouTube stated in a blog post. “Vaccines, in particular, have been a source of fierce debate over the years, despite consistent guidance from health authorities about their effectiveness.”
“Today, we’re expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the WHO,” the Big Tech giant announced.
YouTube explained that they had previously removed “over 130,000 videos” for violating their COVID-19 vaccine policies.
“Throughout this work, we learned important lessons about how to design and enforce nuanced medical misinformation policies at scale. Working closely with health authorities, we looked to balance our commitment to an open platform with the need to remove egregious harmful content,” YouTube continued. “We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines.”
YouTube then listed specific content which would violate their new policy standards.
“Specifically, content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed,” YouTube announced. “This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them. Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines.”
YouTube also added that there are “important exceptions” to the new guidelines.
“Given the importance of public discussion and debate to the scientific process, we will continue to allow content about vaccine policies, new vaccine trials, and historical vaccine successes or failures on YouTube. Personal testimonials relating to vaccines will also be allowed, so long as the video doesn’t violate other Community Guidelines, or the channel doesn’t show a pattern of promoting vaccine hesitancy,” YouTube added.
As part of this announcement, YouTube banned the accounts of numerous prominent anti-vaccine activists. This policy decision also means that YouTube is more aligned with its social media rivals Facebook and Twitter.
In February, Facebook announced that they planned to remove or demote posts which either spread so-called “vaccine misinformation,” or included content that discouraged vaccinations more generally in certain cases. In March, Twitter followed suit, with users facing punishment of various forms for posting what Twitter defines as “harmful misinformation.”