Facebook and YouTube lose fight against Covid-19 vaccine disinformation

Social media companies like Facebook and YouTube have stepped up their policies against coronavirus misinformation and have banned false claims about Covid-19 vaccines. But as the vaccine begins to flow, online accounts exploit loopholes in new policies and successfully share misleading claims that attempt to discourage vaccination.

Throughout the pandemic, platforms have established and updated rules intended to curb false claims related to Covid-19. Between March and October, Facebook deleted 12 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram, and added fact-checking tags to an additional 167 million posts. But the rollout of an authorized Covid-19 vaccine has forced social media companies to adapt again, changing their approach to both Covid-19 misinformation and long-standing anti-vaccination content.

There are already many examples of online content that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines. The publications suggesting that the vaccination is part of a government program and memes that imply that the vaccine has extreme side effects, either are not taken by the platforms, or do not appear to break their rules.

Platforms don’t just fight anti-vaccination communities. According to Yonder, a company that advises companies involved in vaccine development, conspiracy theorists, conservative groups, fringe outlets and others are actively raising concerns about vaccines. While recent polls indicate that the number of Americans willing to be vaccinated has increased – to around 70%, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation – millions of Americans are still reluctant to take the vaccine, and many may not. take immediately.

Facebook has vowed to remove false Covid-19 vaccine claims that could cause imminent physical harm, and YouTube announced it will remove Covid-19 vaccine videos that contradict health officials like the World Health Organization . Twitter takes a two-pronged approach of weeding out misinformation about Covid-19 that it deems most harmful and labeling claims that are simply misleading.

But overall, these approaches so far appear to focus on eliminating misinformation rather than the broader scope of vaccine reluctance and skepticism – a barrier that could be much more complicated. overcome.

While platforms tend to tout new policies designed to tackle disinformation, they don’t always find and remove all of the content that breaks their rules. Searching Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Recode found a lot of misinformation about vaccines that had not yet been removed or labeled as such.

On Facebook, Recode identified several posts that were only removed after reporting them. Some of those who have been pulled say the pandemic was planned or that the vaccine would include a microchip, a claim specifically prohibited by Facebook’s rules. Another post that was deleted by Facebook was a meme that jokingly implied that the vaccine had extreme side effects. The image had already been shared over 100,000 times by the time Facebook deleted it.

Facebook screenshot

Other posts identified by Recode that appear to be breaking company rules included a post on Facebook claiming that the Covid-19 vaccine will ‘alter your DNA’ and ‘attack the uterus’. It was linked to a YouTube video referencing the “plandemic” conspiracy theory and Bill Gates. The post had been shared to a Facebook group of over 12,000 members and the video had been viewed over 15,000 times on YouTube. Likewise, in a public Facebook group of 50,000 members, an article alleged that the Covid-19 vaccines were part of an attempt to “stop us from becoming the spiritual beings we were meant to be.”

While YouTube promised to remove misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine, Recode found a range of content on the platform that appeared to violate these policies, including easily discovered videos suggesting that the Covid-19 vaccine is changing the DNA of people or that the vaccine is a ploy. intentionally killing old people in nursing homes. YouTube removed a video reported by Recode that suggested the vaccine could be the “mark of the beast” and linked it to the End Times in the Book of Revelation.

Media Matters found that, despite YouTube’s policies, videos suggesting the Covid-19 vaccine included a microchip received more than 400,000 views, and some of them had ads running. Meanwhile, Sam Clark of the YouTube Watchdog Transparency Tube points out that many channels known to push conspiracies are posting about vaccines.

Twitter will begin enforcing its new policies against disinformation about Covid-19 from December 21, and research shows the problem is significant and growing. November saw the biggest increase in the number of vaccine disinformation retweets on Twitter this year, according to disinformation tracking company VineSight.

Individual posts on these platforms don’t necessarily gain a lot of engagement, but they can get a significant amount of traction overall and can even spread to other platforms. According to data from Zignal Labs, between December 8 and 14, there were almost 30,000 mentions of the claim that the Chinese Communist Party had links to vaccines and nearly 90,000 mentions of Bell’s palsy, an often temporary condition that causes parts of his face to sag. After four participants in the Moderna vaccine trial had the disease, the FDA warned people to watch for signs of Bell’s palsy, but the agency said there was not enough information to link Bell’s palsy and vaccine.

Meanwhile, much of the content that casts doubt on Covid-19 vaccines avoids making factual claims and is not removed. In an Instagram post, for example, conservative commentator Candace Owens called people vaccinated “sheep.” The video was labeled by Facebook, but it has still been viewed over 2 million times.

Those who make false claims about mandatory vaccinations, which the US government does not consider, also fuel anxiety. Zignal Labs research found that between December 8 and 14, there were over 40,000 mentions of a mandatory vaccine on the platforms it tracks.

“They’re actually fighting a ghost. They’re fighting a boogeyman, ”notes David Broniatowski, who studies behavioral epidemiology at George Washington University. “There is no one out there saying that we are going to pass a law making a Covid vaccine mandatory.”

These ideas don’t exactly amount to misinformation, and they often stop before making statements about the vaccine itself. Yet they serve to undermine confidence in vaccination by raising the prospect of government control, politicizing the vaccine, or raising doubts about the science behind it.

“Someone says, ‘Do you know what’s in the Covid vaccine?’ And they leave it at that – it’s not really disinformation, ”Broniatowski said. “But it certainly increases mistrust of the vaccine.”

This ambiguity makes the job of moderating what is allowed on sites like Facebook and YouTube very difficult. These platforms don’t want to be accused of amplifying anti-vaccination content, but responsibly sorting out content that includes debate, humor, opinions and facts focused on the Covid-19 vaccine as well as misinformation is a major endeavor, especially because we are learning more about Covid-19 vaccines. At the same time, public health experts also stressed that people should have a space to ask questions about vaccines.

It’s important to note that these platforms employ strategies that go beyond deletions, such as applying labels and collecting accurate information from health authorities. But the main concern is that the policies of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube could ultimately exacerbate the vaccine reluctance problem, not only by controlling misinformation, but also by addressing these gray areas. So while the public can put pressure on the platforms to remove objectionable content, what they leave behind is just as delicate.

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