Nicole Ireland, May 22, 2019<\/p>\n
Social media giants say they direct users to sound information, but won’t remove misinformation<\/em><\/p>\n As measles cases continue to rise in Canada and the U.S<\/a>., experts are calling on social media platforms to ban\u00a0anti-vaccination posts, saying the risks to public health created by misinformation outweigh\u00a0the right to free speech.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0they won’t go so far as to block and remove\u00a0anti-vaccination material.<\/p>\n “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\u00a0Jonathan 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\u00a0science and health topics.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n “Vaccine hesitancy”\u00a0is 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)\u00a0frightens some parents and fuels that hesitancy to have their children immunized.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the head of Gavi, a global alliance committed to increasing immunization,\u00a0called on social media companies <\/a>to take down posts that contain\u00a0false information about vaccines, saying the spread of such content “kills people.”<\/p>\n “We have to think about it as a disease,” Gavi\u00a0CEO Dr. Seth Berkley said in Geneva.\u00a0“This spreads at the speed of light, literally.”<\/p>\n Both the Public Health Agency of Canada and the U.S.\u00a0Centers\u00a0for Disease Control and Prevention have emphasized the importance of combating that misinformation\u00a0as 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.<\/p>\n Although there can be side-effects from vaccines<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 most commonly a sore arm or low fever \u2014\u00a0they are temporary and harmless. The risk of a serious reaction, including anaphylaxis,\u00a0is 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.<\/p>\n The fact that misinformation\u00a0makes 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.<\/p>\n “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 \u2014 this is how science moves forward,” he said.<\/p>\n “But in the case of vaccination … there is no genuine controversy there. The science is robust.”<\/p>\n Twitter Canada recently launched\u00a0an initiative called\u00a0#KnowTheFacts, promoting it as a way to combat vaccine misinformation “by surfacing evidence-based resources” from the Public Health Agency of Canada.<\/p>\n 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.”\u00a0Users can then click on a blue button that says “Reach out,” which links to an information page about vaccines and immunization<\/a> on the Government of Canada website.<\/p>\n‘No genuine controversy ‘<\/h2>\n
Effort\u00a0‘belated,’\u00a0expert says<\/h2>\n