The social network had banned publications on vaccines, now only those from official sources are authorized.
Social networks are a major contributor to the spread of anti-vaccine theories. Some take steps to prevent their spread, such as Pinterest. On the subject of vaccines, the American site now only allows publications from official sources.
A healthy life = an inspired life. We’re now surfacing information from public health experts when you make vaccine-related searches on Pinterest. https://t.co/LBbLrJ5p9m pic.twitter.com/ho6CVLkZyp
—Pinterest (@Pinterest) August 28, 2019
A theme previously banned from the site
In 2018, Pinterest first banned all posts on the vaccination. When we entered one of the keywords related to this theme in the search bar, it gave no results. A message explained to users to redirect themselves to a health professional for information on the subject.
Inform users
Rather than banning, Pinterest now chooses to educate. 200 words on the subject of vaccines are authorized but searches only lead to publications from official institutions or organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), for example. “You will not find yourself in the situation where you click on content that is a priori trustworthy and ultimately the recommendations and comments are total misinformation,” explains Ifeoma Ozoma, public policy manager at Pinterest, in The Guardian.
Several sites are committed
Other sites today act against misinformation. YouTube classifies content containing this genre as a category not promoted by its algorithm and Amazon has removed anti-vaccine propaganda films from its catalog of videos on demand. Recent and yet urgent measures: in January 2019, the WHO classified anti-vaccines as a threat to global health.
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