Facebook seeks ways to curb anti-vaccination alarmists

Could Facebook finally be curbing its spread of false information on the danger of vaccinations?

The anti-vaxxer movement has grown exponentially on Facebook‚ putting millions of children across the globe at risk as overall immunity drops.

According to the World Health Organisation‚ failure to vaccinate is now listed as a top threat to global health in 2019.

Although it did not say when this would happen‚ Facebook has said in a statement it is exploring additional measures to combat the problem.

It also said this could include reducing or removing anti-vaxxer content “from recommendations‚ including Groups You Should Join‚ and demoting it in search results‚ while also ensuring that higher quality and more authoritative information is available”.

This comes in the wake of a letter sent to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s CEO by a Democrat member in the US House of Representatives‚ Adam Schiff.

Media group Bloomberg said Schiff sent the letter expressing concern that their platforms were carrying information discouraging parents from vaccinating children.

The anti-vaxxer movement first began about 20 years ago when researcher Andrew Wakefield published an article in The Lancet which linked the Measles Mumps Rubella vaccine to autism. It was later discovered he was paid beforehand to make these findings‚ and The Lancet then distanced itself from the article.

He was struck off the medical register in the UK, but by then the false science of the study had been picked up by lay people who began spreading the message on platforms such as Facebook.

Two decades later‚ an upsurge in preventable childhood diseases is the result.

For example, measles – which can be deadly‚ especially in under-resourced communities – has shot up by 30% in just three years.

SA is no exception – 2017 alone saw three outbreaks.

“I am requesting additional information on the steps that you currently take to provide medically accurate information on vaccinations‚” Schiff said, according to Bloomberg.

“I was pleased to see YouTube’s recent announcement that it will no longer recommend videos that violate its community guidelines‚ such as conspiracy theories or medically inaccurate videos‚ and encourage further action related to vaccine misinformation.”

This comes just days after an extensive report came out in SA detailing how the antivaxxer movement had spread its reach using social media.

Stellenbosch University’s Francois van Schalkwyk wanted to explore this for his PhD‚ and found the main driver for many was simply a case of “trying to hold attention on social media”. –