Vaccine misinformation continues to be an issue for many a government across the globe as they try to inoculate citizens and limit the spread of COVID-19.
In a bid to assist in limiting the spread of misinformation, YouTube has announced some significant changes to its policy.
To that end all content that features vaccine misinformation is banned from the platform.
“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,” YouTube explained in a blog post.
“At the onset of COVID-19, we built on these policies when the pandemic hit, and worked with experts to develop 10 new policies around COVID-19 and medical misinformation. Since last year, we’ve removed over 130,000 videos for violating our COVID-19 vaccine policies,” it added.
As such, YouTube is recommending that content creators not upload videos that infringe upon this newly outlined policy change, such as listing unconfirmed or validated side effects from taking a recognised COVID-19 vaccine.
There are a few exceptions to the policy, however.
“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,” the blog post notes.
Given YouTube sketchy past when it comes to enforcing important policy changes, often waning between missing the mark completely or taking a scorched earth approach, it seems like channels other than those involved in the news, are better off leaving the subject alone entirely, lest they be banned.
“Today’s policy update is an important step to address vaccine and health misinformation on our platform, and we’ll continue to invest across the board in the policies and products that bring high quality information to our viewers and the entire YouTube community,” the blog post concludes.
While this update is welcome, how it will be enforced remains to be seen and we expect some collateral damage.
