YOUTUBE REMOVED 30,000 VIDEOS WITH VACCINE MISINFORMATION

Fri 12 March 2021:

Videos containing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation will be removed from YouTube, the platform announced today. Content about a vaccine that contradicts information from health experts or the World Health Organization won’t be permitted.

YouTube has deleted more than 30,000 videos that contained misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations since October, according to the company’s spokesperson Thursday.

“A COVID-19 vaccine may be imminent, therefore we’re ensuring we have the right policies in place to be able to remove misinformation related to a COVID-19 vaccine,” Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesman, said in an email. That could include false claims that vaccines implant microchips in people’s bodies, for example, or that they cause infertility. Both rumors are untrue.

The videos included claims about the vaccinations “that contradict local health authorities or the World Health Organization,” said Elena Hernandez in a statement carried by multiple outlets.

“Overall, since February 2020, we have removed over 800,000 videos related to dangerous or misleading coronavirus information,” she said.

In last October, the company said it would have right policies in place to remove misinformation related to a COVID-19 vaccine from the platform and vowed to delete any videos in contraction with local health authorities or the World Health Organization.

Facebook and Twitter have also taken similar actions to prevent misleading information about the COVID-19 vaccinations.

COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing COVID-19 disease, especially severe illness and death, but some anti-vaccine activists undermine vaccination, claiming the jabs are deadly.

More than 325.5 million vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, according to data compiled by Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.