Pinterest and YouTube Tackle Anti-vaxx War

Pinterest and YouTube are actively working to prevent misinformation regarding the effectiveness and safety of vaccinations.

A spokesperson for Pinterest confirmed to PEOPLE that Pinterest has been “blocking certain searches related to vaccinations” since last year, because they found that “results were leading to harmful misinformation.”

According to the policy, Pinterest will remove “harmful advice…created as part of disinformation campaigns” from its site.

“We don’t allow advice when it has immediate and detrimental effects on a pinner’s health or on public safety,” the policy reads. “The includes all promotion of false cures for terminal or chronic illnesses and anti-vaccination advice.

The company will also remove Pins, boards and entire accounts that violate their health misinformation policy. Additionally, Pinterest works to block websites “of people or groups that explicitly affiliate themselves with health misinformation,” which “immediately removes their content from our platform and presents people from saving new Pins from their websites to Pinterest.”

“We want Pinterest to be an inspiring place for people, and there’s nothing inspiring about misinformation,” a Pinterest spokesperson tells PEOPLE via statement. “That’s why we continue to work on new ways of keeping misleading content off our platform and out of our recommendations engine.”

YouTube have also been removing ads from videos on their platform which promote anti-vaccination rhetoric.

“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,” a company spokesperson told PEOPLE.

“We enforce these policies vigorously, and if we find a video that violates them, we immediately take action and remove ads.”

Let’s hope this helps spread the message that this misinformation needs to stop!

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20 Comments

- - mom367585 said
  - 27 Apr 2019
    9:40 pm
A government body does have to tackle this issue of people being kislead however sometimes it’s the government being misleading themselves!

- - teegsmrstee said
  - 27 Apr 2019
    8:40 pm
This is a good way to tackle the issue.

- - MisChip said
  - 16 Apr 2019
    10:51 pm
This is great news! Good work!

- - P&M'smum said
  - 10 Apr 2019
    2:45 am
So glad social media is actively counteracting misinformation around the anti- vaxxer movement.

- - mom74005 said
  - 10 Mar 2019
    4:17 pm
So glad that the information is going to be more readily available

- - MrsA said
  - 05 Mar 2019
    10:44 pm
I find it funny that anti-vaxxers completely ignore science but happily get their information from vloggers and the like. Crazy times.

- - littlehandsofmine said
  - 04 Mar 2019
    7:43 am
I don’t use Pininteredt at all

- - BellaB said
  - 03 Mar 2019
    7:10 pm
I think this is a great move, for good reasons.

- - hopefullyheidi said
  - 02 Mar 2019
    10:15 pm
I’m not an anti vaxxer, but gee I wish YouTube as much effort into ridding it’s platform of other very harmful content.

- - nealsq said
  - 01 Mar 2019
    1:09 pm
we should be all wanting to protect children, good on them

- - mom81879 said
  - 01 Mar 2019
    9:49 am
This is what the world needs! People promoting vaccinations. Good to see social media doing something good for a change

- - mom101628 said
  - 27 Feb 2019
    10:22 pm
So good to see one of the social media companies are doing the right thing with not allowing fake information to get even further spread.

- - mom81879 said
  - 27 Feb 2019
    7:41 pm
Yay! So good to read this. Way too much misinformation and incorrect information surrounding vaccinations, most of which has no medical basis what so ever. It’s nothing to do with personal opinion, it’s got to do with whats fact and proven and what’s not

- - mom290396 said
  - 27 Feb 2019
    7:10 pm
Well done to them! Let’s not make it easy for anti-vaxxers to spread their fears

- - becstalou said
  - 27 Feb 2019
    10:12 am
Definitely need to block stuff that is made up with no medical or research basis and reported as fact.

- - Ellen said
  - 27 Feb 2019
    7:28 am
Very hard to distinguish good info from misinformation. And who is to decide what is good info and misinformation ? This is a lot about personal opinions.

- - mom343701 said
  - 27 Feb 2019
    6:26 am
yes it is a minefield trying to work out what is misinformation and what is not. Good to hear some action is being taken

- - mom114371 said
  - 26 Feb 2019
    8:55 pm
Good. People need ask their doctors etc and not read blogs from some mummy blogger who has no idea.

- - mom153091 said
  - 26 Feb 2019
    4:20 pm
There is so much misinformation on the internet. People need to learn that not everything you read is correct and check information with your doctor/nurse/pharmacist.

- - mom90758 said
  - 26 Feb 2019
    2:13 pm
It looks like a very important step! Social media has become a very important way to communicate. It reaches a lot of people and misinformation can be really harmful.