Facebook Militates Against Anti-Vaccine Movement
Facebook “Exploring Additional Measures” to Fight Anti-Vaccine Information: Report
As the “fake news” phenomenon continues to sweep across the Web, and the purge of independent media accelerates, lawmakers are calling on Facebook and Big Tech to take responsibility for anti-vaccine messaging that appears on their platform(s).
According to a new report at Geek.com, lawmakers such as Adam Schiff (D-CA) are blaming the measles outbreak in the U.S. on social media systems that offer anti-vaccine messaging in their “recommended reading and groups” areas. Schiff would like Big Tech to step up and combat exposure to the information, according to a letter he sent directly to the heads of Google and Facebook. Geek.com cites Bloomberg:
“There is strong evidence to suggest that at least part of the source of this trend is the degree to which medically inaccurate information about vaccines surface on the websites where many Americans get their information,” Schiff wrote in the letter. “The algorithms which power these services are not designed to distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information, and the consequences of that are particularly troubling for public health issues.”
Facebook responded to Schiff’s letter and told Bloomberg in a statement that it’s “exploring additional measures to best combat the problem.” These next steps might include minimizing or reducing false anti-vaccine content from recommendations, including Facebook’s Groups You Should Join, and giving them a lower ranking in Facebook search results. Additionally, Facebook will step up its fake news policing to ensure more authoritative information is available on its social network site.
Legitimate scientific inquiry into the dangers and/or validity of vaccination is by now voluminous and certainly well known to readers of independent media. Evidently, the fact that a level playing field of information — which is exactly what the Internet was promised to be — is skewing toward anti-vaccination (and other holistic healing) must be worrying to those who rely on the financial support of Big Pharma and establishment medicine.
The fact of the matter is that once someone learns the truth, there is no going back to sleep. The urge to share one’s awareness that is intended to help others who are still unaware is a powerful one. It is, after all, a reason why these “threatening” anti-vaccine messages go viral on social media. From Bloomberg:
The first result under a search for “vaccines” on YouTube is a video showing a “middle ground” debate between supporters of vaccines and those who think they’re dangerous. The fourth result is first episode of a popular anti-vaccine documentary series called “The Truth About Vaccines.” It has almost 1.2 million views.
Rather than acknowledge the organic nature of information sharing, many in the pro-vaccine camp are likening the anti-vaccine movement to some sort of Russian bot-op in an American election that is mobilizing to force propaganda on the impressionable readers that populate social media.
Lawmakers like Schiff appear to have been emboldened by the tacit globalist directive given by the World Health Organization this year that it is a threat to the planet that people should avoid vaccines — so, by extension, “anti-vaxxers” themselves are a threat. This is the language that precedes all instances where the removal of liberties is done in the name of security. It is tiresome propaganda at this point, but it has real-world consequences in a digital age where de facto book burning can take place at the speed of an algorithmic change.
In the meantime, the mothers know that vaccines can be dangerous; the World Health Organization needs its head examined; and the politicians and Big Tech titans who would sign on to a mission to rid the world of competing ideas are the greatest threat of all.
Image credit: Anthony Freda Art (modified)