YouTube will ban all “harmful vaccine content” from its platform, including claims that vaccines are ineffective at reducing disease transmission. The ban comes after a year of escalating censorship by the Google-owned company.
By RT News (https://www.rt.com/news/)
Link to full article here: https://www.rt.com/news/536174-youtube-bans-anti-vax/
“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 said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The new rules prohibit content alleging that vaccines “cause chronic side effects,” that they “do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease,” and that they contain unlisted ingredients like fetal cells. The rules apply to all currently approved and administered vaccines, and not just Covid-19 shots.
At first glance, the rules are open to interpretation. YouTube’s moderators will have to decide, for instance, whether content discussing side effects strays beyond the “rare side effects that are recognised by health authorities.” Likewise, multiple studies and real-world data have suggested that Covid-19 vaccines are less effective at preventing transmission and infection than previously thought, and some suggest that this efficacy wanes with time.
And, while YouTube explicitly bans claims that vaccines contain fetal tissue or fetal cell lines, shots for various diseases – including Hepatitis A, Rubella and Chickenpox – are actually manufactured using cell lines started in aborted fetal tissue, but individual doses do not contain any of this tissue.
Content violating these new rules will receive a series of “strikes” from YouTube, with three strikes resulting in the termination of the offending channel.
