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YouTube channels that promote anti-vaccination content are not allowed to run ads on the video sharing platform, according to one rule.
reported for the first time by BuzzFeed News on Friday.YouTube has stated that it considers anti-vaccination content to be "dangerous or harmful", which, as a policy, does not allow for monetization, which means that it will not allow video to generate money for the creator by advertising.
"We apply strict rules to videos where we allow ads to be shown." "Videos that promote anti-vaccination content violate these rules." We enforce these rules vigorously and if we find a video that violates them, we immediately take action and remove the ads, "said a spokesperson for YouTube Internal business in a report.
YouTube told us that restricting ads for anti-vaccination videos was not a new policy for the company. However, at least some channels have been able to monetize, in violation of this policy, according to BuzzFeed News.
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According to the BuzzFeed News report, several channels promoting anti-vaccine content – including VAXXED TV, LarryCook333 and iHealthTub – were able to run ads without the advertisers themselves. According to several sources, several companies have asked YouTube to prevent their ads from appearing on their videos. One of them, Vitacost, a discount vitamin company, has fully pulled their ads from YouTube, according to the report.
Since then, YouTube has prevented all three channels from showing ads. BuzzFeed News brought the case to the attention of the company.
Social networks, including Facebook and YouTube, have been used aggressively by advocates of the fight against vaccination. Meanwhile, Pinterest blocked the search for anti-vaccine content from its service earlier this week.
All of this is happening even as measles outbreaks have increased this year. Since January, there have been more than 120 cases of measles, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is more than all the year 2016, when there were only 86 of them.
US Congressman Adam Schiff sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg expressing his concern over information on the sites of both companies that "deter parents from vaccinating their children, thus helping to reduce vaccination rates vaccine-preventable diseases. "
Last January, YouTube announced that it had updated its recommendation algorithm, promising to promote less conspiracy theory videos to its users. Among the examples cited by YouTube at the time of the "limit" content, there were videos stating that the Earth was flat, or those that married false medical information.
This story was first published in Business Insider.
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