Nairobi News

YouTube has announced the move to purge all anti-vaccine content related to the Covid-19 jab as part of its new set of policies rollout.

Among those marked for removal include videos that allege that certified inoculations by the health ministry are unsafe, ineffective, cause cancer, autism, infertility among other misinformation.

Other than the coronavirus vaccine, certified inoculations that have been there for a while such as hepatitis B and measles shots are also incorporated in the new policy.

“We are 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 World Health Organisation (WHO),” read a post by YouTube’s Global Trust and Safety Vice President, Matt Halprin.

He explained the new policy will allow content about new vaccine trials, vaccine policies, personal experiences, vaccine failures, and successes from historical videos, to go on.

“We will remove claims that vaccines are dangerous or cause a lot of health effects, that vaccines cause autism, cancer, infertility or contain microchips,”

“At least hundreds” of moderators at YouTube are working specifically on medical misinformation,” he said.

The new policies will be carried out in all the languages deployed on YouTube.

This directive comes months after a similar one by Facebook and Twitter targeting vaccine misinformation.

The recent developments mark a fundamental shift in the operational policies by social media platforms which have for a long time opposed strict content policing.

In its argument, YouTube had earlier opined that open networks are of paramount importance in enabling free speech.

However, the company alongside other social media networks has been on the receiving end of backlash by legislators, regulators, and even some social media users who have accused it of propagating social vices such as vaccine skepticism.

Some critics have come out guns blazing questioning why the social media giant which boasts of over 1bilion hourly streaming, took its sweet time to implement the new policy.