“Why some experts say it’s time for Twitter and Facebook to ban anti-vaccination posts”, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News
Nicole Ireland, May 22, 2019
Social media giants say they direct users to sound information, but won’t remove misinformation
As measles cases continue to rise in Canada and the U.S., experts are calling on social media platforms to ban anti-vaccination posts, saying the risks to public health created by misinformation outweigh the right to free speech.
Industry giants like Facebook and Twitter recently announced measures to try to steer users toward scientifically sound information about vaccines, but both told CBC News they won’t go so far as to block and remove anti-vaccination material.
“I think this is one of the biggest questions that we’re facing right now in this information age: Where is the line between free speech and protecting the public?” said Jonathan Jarry, a biological scientist with McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, a centre dedicated to helping the public separate fact from fiction on a variety of science and health topics.
“People are being misled by highly damaging misinformation and I think that in that case, maybe the public good outweighs the right for people to scream ‘Fire!’ in a theatre where there is no fire.”
‘No genuine controversy ‘
“Vaccine hesitancy” is one of the top 10 threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization. Misinformation claiming that vaccines are unsafe or cause “vaccine injuries” such as autism (a theory put forward in a research paper more than 20 years ago that has since been debunked and retracted) frightens some parents and fuels that hesitancy to have their children immunized.
On Tuesday, the head of Gavi, a global alliance committed to increasing immunization, called on social media companies to take down posts that contain false information about vaccines, saying the spread of such content “kills people.”
“We have to think about it as a disease,” Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley said in Geneva. “This spreads at the speed of light, literally.”
Both the Public Health Agency of Canada and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have emphasized the importance of combating that misinformation as a way to stop the current rise of measles, a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease that was declared eliminated in Canada in 1998 and in the U.S. in 2000.
Although there can be side-effects from vaccines — most commonly a sore arm or low fever — they are temporary and harmless. The risk of a serious reaction, including anaphylaxis, is less than one in a million, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada, and can be managed by the health-care provider administering the vaccine.
The fact that misinformation makes some parents afraid to vaccinate their children constitutes a public health threat serious enough to outweigh freedom of speech on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, Jarry said.
“There are issues where debate is healthy, where you have people who in good faith … want to debate the evidence because it’s not clear where the consensus lies, and that’s perfectly fine — this is how science moves forward,” he said.
“But in the case of vaccination … there is no genuine controversy there. The science is robust.”
Effort ‘belated,’ expert says
Twitter Canada recently launched an initiative called #KnowTheFacts, promoting it as a way to combat vaccine misinformation “by surfacing evidence-based resources” from the Public Health Agency of Canada.
When a user searches Twitter for information on vaccination or immunization, a notification pops up on the screen titled, “Know the facts,” with a message below saying, “Information and resources on vaccines and immunizations are available from the Public Health Agency of Canada.” Users can then click on a blue button that says “Reach out,” which links to an information page about vaccines and immunization on the Government of Canada website.