YouTube Announces New Policy Removing ‘False Claims’ For ‘Vaccines in General’ Not Just COVID

Posted on YouTube’s Official BlogSpot Thursday was a message titled “Managing harmful vaccine content on YouTube” with the subtitle, “we’re expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on vaccines.”

Boasting front and center in bold is the sentence, “Since last year, we’ve removed over 130,000 videos for violating our COVID-19 vaccine policies” and adds “Today’s policy update is an important step to address vaccine and health misinformation on our platform, and we’ll continue to invest across the board in the policies and products that bring high-quality information to our viewers and the entire YouTube community.”

“We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines”, says the post.

“Specifically,” the blog continues, “content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of the disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed.”

“This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them. Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines.”

The company boasts that “As with our COVID guidelines, we consulted with local and international health organizations and experts in developing these policies.”

The company has allowed for some interesting exceptions. “Given the importance of public discussion and debate to the scientific process, we will continue to allow content about vaccine policies, new vaccine trials, and historical vaccine successes or failures on YouTube.”

Personal testimonials relating to vaccines will be allowed, but only if the video or channel “doesn’t show a pattern of promoting vaccine hesitancy.”