YouTube, a social media platform owned by Google, recently announced its concerns regarding the misuse and false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine on the platform. On Wednesday, Sep. 30, YouTube published a blog post entitled “Managing harmful vaccine content on Youtube” onto its official blog site.
In this post, they discuss how damaging spreading false medical information and specifically vaccine-related content can be. YouTube believes it is critical to provide correct and accurate information about approved vaccines and guidance from the World Health Organization on its site. They state, “Vaccines in particular have been a source of fierce debate over the years, despite consistent guidance from health authorities about their effectiveness.” While providing correct medical information has always been important to YouTube, it has become even more critical since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to their blog post, YouTube has deleted over 130,000 videos that violate the new Community Guidelines surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine.
While YouTube values its public platform, it recognizes that misinformation about false effects of the COVID-19 vaccine, including infertility, cancer and tracking abilities, should not be present on the service because they are inaccurate claims. According to YouTube, “Working closely with health authorities, we looked to balance our commitment to an open platform with the need to remove egregious harmful content.”
However, while blatant misinformation is banned, videos confessing personal experiences with vaccines, as well as historical vaccine successes and failures, are still allowed. Moreover, YouTube updated its community guidelines to prevent the spread of misinformation about other vaccines, including the measles vaccine, as well. While these new policies went into effect on Wednesday, YouTube expects it will take a while to perfect the new guidelines and remove videos that violate content rules.
In light of these new guidelines used by multiple platforms, anti-vaccination conservatives have expressed their distaste for companies such as YouTube and Instagram widening their Community Guidelines. Instead, they opt to express their opinions and claims on other apps and webpages, such as Rumble. According to CNBC, YouTube has removed the channels of Joseph Mercola, Erin Elizabeth and Sherri Tenpenny due to the promotion of vaccine misinformation and the violation of COVID-19 vaccine guidelines. These and many other inaccurate claims made by various YouTube channels that may have previously prevented people from receiving the vaccine are now prohibited.
Considering the rapid spread of the Delta Variant of COVID-19, it is now highly critical for social media to provide accurate information for citizens to make informed decisions surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the World Health Organization, there have been more than 233 million cases of Coronavirus worldwide and over four million confirmed deaths. To promote accurate COVID-19 information, The World Health Organization even has a page myth-busting false claims about the COVID-19 and state the importance of masking even for vaccinated people. They state, “Safe and effective vaccines are a game-changing tool: but for the foreseeable future we must continue wearing masks, cleaning our hands, ensuring good ventilation indoors, physically distancing and avoiding crowds.”
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