U.K. report notes online effort to sow distrust of vaccines

Leaders of anti-vaccine groups described the arrival of coronavirus vaccines as a pivotal opportunity to sow distrust in vaccination and laid out plans for online campaigns to do so, according to a report from an organization that opposes online misinformation.

The report, from the U.K.based Center for Countering Digital Hate, quoted leaked audio from an October conference in which the leaders, many of whom have huge social media followings, discussed strategies to encourage skepticism and fear of vaccines in the months ahead.

The report highlights the ways in which the coronavirus crisis has catalyzed vaccine opponents, as well as the parallels between the tactics used by anti-vaccine groups — such as coordinated messaging — and other purveyors of online misinformation campaigns.

It also illuminates the struggles social media companies face in debunking and policing misinformation about the coronavirus.

Facebook, for example, bans misinformation about the virus and the vaccine, but falsehoods about the virus have slipped through the cracks throughout the pandemic. The company has created a gray area by permitting users to form groups that question and criticize vaccines, some of which have hundreds of thousands of members.

Some of the tactics discussed during the online conference from the National Vaccine Information Center include coordinating a message, or “master narrative,” that the virus is not dangerous and that organizations that promote vaccines are not trustworthy, according to the report.

That includes pushing misleading story lines — for example, focusing on instances when people experience side effects from the vaccine and using those examples to argue that dangerous side effects will be widespread. Another strategy is to target Black Americans, playing on their historical skepticism of the medical community based on past practices.

In recent months, Facebook removed two major groups opposing vaccination, including the 100,000-plus-member Stop Mandatory Vaccination and several of the movement’s leading figures. The company did not ban the groups over misinformation, but for spam and abusive behavior, such as using paid troll farms in Macedonia and the Philippines to spread messages.

Those bans, the Center for Countering Digital Hate says, resulted in 3.2 million fewer people who were members or followers of anti-vaccine pages and groups.

But that number is small when compared with anti-vaccine groups’ growth. Anti-vaccine conspiracy theory accounts have grown by nearly 50% this year, starting at 15.5 million followers in 2019 and rising to 23.1 million this month, the report said.

Overall, 425 anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter have 59.2 million followers, nearly 877,000 more than they had in June.

The National Vaccine Information Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook spokeswoman Andrea Vallone said in a statement: “We are committed to reaching as many people as possible with accurate information about vaccines, and launched partnerships with [the World Health Organization] and UNICEF to do just that. We’ve banned ads that discourage people from getting vaccines and reduced the number of people who see vaccine hoaxes verified by the [WHO] and the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].”