Megan Udinski, FISM News
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The multi-million dollar tech company, YouTube, expanded its medical censorship policies to include medical misinformation about all vaccines, paving the way for it to pull thousands of posts regarding COVID-19 from it’s platform.
The YouTube team put out a blog post, Managing Harmful Vaccine Content on YouTube, on September 29 outlining its new regulations for what it considers medical misinformation.
In the statement, YouTube explains that “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” would be removed.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, YouTube created ten new policies specifically dealing with information related to the coronavirus, including transmission, prevention and treatment. Under these guidelines, several over-the-top conspiracy theory videos were pulled including videos which claimed if you avoid Asian food you won’t get the virus, or that setting off fireworks will clean the air of the virus violates common sense. However, these guidelines will now target those in the medical field who have a different understanding of the virus and the vaccine than the mainstream media.
This guideline could, in theory, block information collected by VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) which is co-managed by the CDC and FDA, as it shows that the COVID-19 vaccines have surpassed all other vaccines combined with deaths following the vaccine. This data could be labeled as prevention misinformation under their guidelines.
As the new guidelines for blocking videos and channels roll out, some high profile people have already found themselves deleted from the platform including Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Joseph Mercola. In response to the ban, Robert F. Kennedy Jr stated, “There is no instance in history when censorship and secrecy has advanced either democracy or public health.”
This move has come about as a response to mainstream media blaming social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for contributing to the spread of false medical information. Several Democrats have celebrated the censorship although equally criticizing that the move came too late. For example, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) Tweeted,
This is a strong move and all platforms should do the same.
Then we should pass my bill holding social media companies liable for profiting off of and allowing spread of vaccine misinformation. Way too many people see and believe vaccine misinformation. https://t.co/Q4A63mVCdC
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) September 30, 2021
Others like Dr. W. Malone, who invented mRNA vaccines, called the censorship “pervasive and institutionalized.” Substack journalist Glenn Greenwald, criticized those in the media for being the lead proponents of censorship:
The fact that we’re so accustomed to corporate journalists being the leading activists *for censorship* has normalized it and obscured how utterly warped and sick it is. As I’ve said before, it’d be as if the leading cheerleaders for more cigarette smoking were cardiologists.