On Wednesday, YouTube announced is “expanding medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on vaccines.”
In its announcement, the video-sharing platform said it has removed more than 130,000 videos for violating the already-in-place COVID-19 vaccine policies.
“We’ve long removed content that promotes harmful remedies, such as saying drinking turpentine can cure diseases,” the organization said. “At the onset of COVID-19, we built on these policies when the pandemic hit, and worked with experts to develop 10 new policies around COVID-19 and medical misinformation.”
The organization said it consulted with local and international health organizations and experts to develop the updated policies.
YouTube said it will remove “content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines.”
The updated policy changes were taken into effect Wednesday, Sept. 29.
“There are important exceptions to our new guidelines. 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,” the organization said. “Personal testimonials relating to vaccines will also be allowed, so long as the video doesn’t violate other Community Guidelines, or the channel doesn’t show a pattern of promoting vaccine hesitancy.”
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