Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is promoting a fitness industry "entrepreneur" who claims vaccines are the cause of autism



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Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, appeared on a podcast featuring a controversial fitness personality who has scientifically defended refuted claims that vaccines are the cause of autism.

Host Ben Greenfield – who had tweeted in February that "vaccines actually cause autism" – thanked Mr. Dorsey for his "epic podcast".

The Twitter manager responded, "Have a great conversation and enjoy everything you do to simplify the mountains of research focused on increasing your health! Grateful for you.


Its appearance comes as other high-tech companies such as Facebook and Pinterest tackle anti-vaccine content on their platforms. Twitter said Dorsey was not aware of the controversial views of the host.

A spokesman for Twitter said L & # 39; Independent that Mr. Dorsey was unaware of Mr. Greenfield's opinion about the vaccinations and that his appearance on the podcast did not validate these beliefs.

The spokesman mentioned Twitter's advertising policy, which concerns the promotion of controversial health content. Advertisements regarding vaccination could potentially be subject to several policies, including one that states that any claim for treatment, treatment, diagnosis or prevention of certain diseases is restricted.

On Wednesday, Greenfield published another vaccine-related tweet, repeating unsupported claims that vaccinations could be harmful.

He said: "I am not against vaccinations. They saved a lot of lives. I have been vaccinated. My children have been vaccinated. But I also think that we have to pay attention to possible adverse health effects. I rarely visit the subject and I had no idea before knowing how much this question was billed. "

In his Twitter biography, Mr. Greenfield writes, "Athlete, father, entrepreneur, write and talk about health, longevity, fitness, and nutrition." He has more than 70,000 followers.

Twitter and Facebook have been repeatedly accused of providing a platform for spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, as well as any other misinformation.

Disinformation campaigns from the anti-vax movement have become so serious that diseases such as measles are making a comeback in countries where they have almost been eliminated.

In the United States, health officials have declared a public health emergency in Washington State as a result of an outbreak of the disease.

"The reasons for this increase are complex and not all of these cases are due to vaccine hesitancy," the World Health Organization said in January, while calling the anti-vaccine movement One of the worst threats to the health of humanity in 2019.

Since then, Facebook has taken steps to prevent anti-vaccine content from appearing on its social network by reducing the ranking of groups and pages that propagate erroneous information.


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"If these hoaxes of vaccines appear on Facebook, we will act against them," wrote Monika Bickert, head of global politics at the company, in a blog post earlier this month.

"We are exploring ways to give people more accurate information from Vaccine Specialist Organizations, at the top of the associated research findings, in pages dealing with the topic and on invitations to join groups on the topic. "

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