YouTube has announced that the platform will begin removing content questioning any approved medical vaccines, not just those that pertain to COVID-19. This decision is a departure from their historically hands-off approach to content that is featured on the site.
Google, the platform’s parent company, announced earlier today that it would extend its policy against misinformation to cover all vaccines that health authorities have deemed effective. The ban will apply to any media that claims vaccines are dangerous or lead to chronic health outcomes, such as the widely held debates on whether vaccines cause autism, YouTube’s vice president for trust and safety, Matt Halprin, said in a statement.
Last year, YouTube removed video content that was critical of COVID-19 vaccines.
The platform said it has since pulled more than 130,000 videos for violating the rule. But many videos got around the rule by making false claims about vaccines without mentioning COVID-19 specifically. YouTube has since determined its policy was too limited and amended it.
“We can imagine viewers then potentially extrapolating to Covid-19,” Halprin said in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure that we’re covering the whole gamut.”
