Anti-vaccination views can spread on YouTube, but a new analysis suggests the site has begun to get a handle on its vaccine disinformation problem.
Twelve years ago found 42 per cent of more than 150 videos on YouTube were negative towards vaccination. By comparison, Ethan Reever at Quinnipiac University,聽Connecticut found that now just 12 per cent from a similar collection of videos were negative about vaccination, with 2 per cent ambiguous and the rest positive.
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The World Health Organisation listing vaccine hesitancy as one of its and with the return of measles outbreaks in the US, online platforms like YouTube are considered a key battleground on attitudes towards vaccination.
YouTube has been accused of leading viewers , and in February the company said it would demonetise such content by . However, the new analysis suggests the platform was already making progress before that.
In November 2018, Reever watched 100 videos returned by the search term 鈥榲accination鈥�, with videos classified as negative if they focused on vaccine risks, side effects or manufacturing conspiracies. Dangerous ingredients were the most discussed negative issue raised, followed by autism, a link that has been repeatedly debunked.
The 86 positive videos had on average 10 times more views than the negative ones, according to the analysis, presented at the ASM Microbe conference in San Francisco.
YouTube did not say why it is still hosting anti-vaccine videos but it says false information does not necessarily violate its terms. It told 快猫短视频 that misinformation is a 鈥渄ifficult challenge鈥� but the platform is taking steps on vaccination including 鈥渟urfacing more authoritative content鈥� during searches and reducing 鈥渞ecommendations of certain anti-vaccination videos鈥�.
However, anti-vaccination content is still easy to find on the site. The study didn鈥檛 look into recommended content, with one common criticism of YouTube being that people who are not looking for anti-vaccination videos can be steered in that direction by the site鈥檚 automatic suggestions.
