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from the even-my-parent's-VCR-clock-is-right-once-a-day dept.
Channels like VAXXED TV, LarryCook333, iHealthTube, and other anti-vaccination channels on YouTube have been seeing their videos demonetized starting Friday.
“We have strict policies that govern what videos we allow ads to appear on, and videos that promote anti-vaccination content are a violation of those policies”
the policy referenced by YouTube states:
Harmful or dangerous acts
Video content that promotes harmful or dangerous acts that result in serious physical, emotional, or psychological injury is not suitable for advertising. Some examples include videos depicting painful or invasive surgical or cosmetic procedures, or pranks involving sexual harassment or humiliation.
According to YouTube, this includes anti-vaxxer content.
Youtube has also introduced an information panel pertaining to vaccines. Looking through some anti-vax channels, the following text and link is displayed below anti-vax videos:
Vaccine controversies
Vaccine hesitancy, a reluctance or refusal to vaccinate or have one's children vaccinated, has been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019.[1][2] Hesitancy results from public debates around the medical, ethical and legal issues related to vaccines.
Wikipedia
Most may agree with the target of these actions (particularly with measles making a tragic comeback in the U.S. due to loss of herd immunity resulting from reduced vaccination rates), but the process still has those 'unaccountable', 'untransparent', 'arbitrary', 'unappealable' characteristics that have become the norm with large social media providers.
Pinterest is also taking measures to reduce the spread of anti-vax propaganda on its platform
So how exactly is Pinterest doing this? By blacklisting search terms like “vaccines” from the platform, along with sites that spread this sort of health misinformation.
Additional coverage of anti-vax demonitization Here and here
A sampling of previous coverage of the 'vaccine controversy' on SoylentNews here and here
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 25 2019, @06:12PM (1 child)
Uneducated? no, well, not all of them, some of them know *exactly* what they're doing
dangerously unscrupulous? yes, fuck yes...
And yet, sitting beside me as I type this, is someone who is deaf in one ear as a result of childhood measles over 50 years ago, despite having been vaccinated.
That's a problem here as well, having been promised magical 'silver bullets', it's very hard for parents to accept as an excuse 'sorry, that's the way the dice roll...shit happens' (no matter how nicely it's couched in medical terminology) in that Nth percentage of cases where these bullets fail to kill the werewolf.
To paraphrase the way someone put it in one of the previous discussions here, the goal of mass vaccination programs isn't really about protecting the health of any specific individual as such, but that of the herd in general, people need to be told up front that in these cases, shit will indeed happen to an unlucky percentage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 25 2019, @08:04PM
Let me put it this way. Your friend is deaf in one ear because he got measles despite being vaccinated, but that is not the whole story.
Vaccination does not work to "completely stop you from ever getting the disease". No one in their right mind should even think of it that way.
A vaccine works by giving your body pre-warning that something nasty is coming, and this gives your body a head start on figuring out how to deal with it thereby lessening the effects dramatically.
You blaming vaccines for your friend being deaf is the same as blaming seatbelts because, despite wearing the seatbelt properly you were injured in a high speed collision. The seatbelt prevented something far worse from happening. The vaccine did as well. Don't believe me? 900 unvaccinated kids just died in Madagascar https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/25/measles-outbreak-900-dead-madagascar-could-happen-u-s/2977595002/ [usatoday.com] and 130 died in the Phillipines https://boingboing.net/2019/02/19/measles-kills-130-in-the-phili.html [boingboing.net] This shit is deadly and killing innocents in countries where access to vaccines is limited.
Oddly it is at least a misdemeanor in most states not to buckle up your child, and it is a felony in 5 states.
https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/safetybeltuse/mapbeltenforcement [iihs.org]
Isn't it odd that every argument against vaccination can be made against seatbelts and child car seats, yet you do not see people in their right mind running around with their kids unbuckled and encouraging others to do the same.