YouTube has banned all videos containing misinformation about vaccines which are at the moment administered and have been permitted by native well being authorities or the World Health Organization. The measure is an growth of a coverage masking COVID-19 vaccines.

The service says that customers , as an example, put up movies during which they declare that vaccines result in continual unwanted effects (aside from uncommon unwanted effects that well being authorities have acknowledged); content material that alleges vaccines do not cut back transmission or contraction of illnesses; or movies which have inaccuracies about vaccine components.

There are some exceptions. YouTube “will continue to allow content about vaccine policies, new vaccine trials and historical vaccine successes or failures.” Users can even share scientific discussions of vaccines and private testimonials about their experiences, so long as they do not have a historical past of selling vaccine misinformation and their video complies with YouTube’s different guidelines. Posting movies that “condemn, dispute or satirize misinformation” that violates YouTube’s insurance policies ought to be okay too.

YouTube instructed the Washington Post that it is taking down channels linked to distinguished anti-vaccine advocates, together with Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The purpose it did not transfer to ban all anti-vaccine content material sooner is as a result of it was specializing in COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

“Developing robust policies takes time,” YouTube’s vp of world belief and security Matt Halprin instructed the publication. “We wanted to launch a policy that is comprehensive, enforceable with consistency and adequately addresses the challenge.”

YouTube, in addition to Facebook and Twitter, banned COVID-19 misinformation within the early days of the pandemic within the spring of 2020. YouTube has eliminated greater than 130,000 movies that broke its guidelines about COVID-19 vaccines, which it introduced final October, and greater than one million movies in whole that included coronavirus misinformation.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been working to scale back the unfold of anti-vaccine content material since at the least 2019. It formally banned vaccine misinformation in February.