YouTube expands policy to crack down on anti-vaccine content

YouTube on Wednesday announced its new policy on medical misinformation, saying it will remove videos that falsely claim approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects. Google’s video-sharing company said that the false claims about vaccines against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) “spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general.”

“Today, we’re expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the WHO,” YouTube said in a statement.

In the initial days of the Covid vaccine development, YouTube was inundated with conspiracy theory videos, one of them even claiming that Microsoft’s Bill Gates was planning to track everyone through a substance mixed with vaccines.