The group said: “Other adverts featured Judy Mikovits’ anti-vaxx conspiracy theories, who featured in the notorious Plandemic film, and adverts placed by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Children’s Health Defense campaign that promote health misinformation about both vaccines and 5G mobile phone signals.”
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Nearly one in six people in UK will refuse a coronavirus vaccine, new survey finds
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A new survey states that nearly one in six Britons will refuse a coronavirus vaccine when one comes available.
The findings come as large anti-vaccine sentiment spreads across social media, posing a threat to efforts contain the disease.
The poll was carried out by YouGov for the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and found that 16% of British adults will ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ avoid a COVID-19 vaccine.
The survey of 1,663 people also found there was a difference in people’s sentiment towards the vaccine based upon if they got news from social media or traditional media.
Those who got their news from traditional media platforms were nine percentage points more likely to definitely or probably get a vaccine.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, the 150 largest anti-vaccination social media pages and YouTube channels have collected about 8 million more followers.
The 400 outlets in the sample have a combined following of 55 million people.
On those pages, false conspiracy theories are often shared such as one that spread the rumour that Bill Gates created the coronavirus pandemic, that vaccines cause coronavirus and tests for the vaccine have caused women to become infertile.
The majority of the followers are on Facebook, despite Facebook officially opposing anti-vaccine content in 2019 with policies to reduce the spread of posts that have ‘exaggerated or sensational health claims’.
At the time, a Facebook product manager said: “People come together on Facebook to talk about, advocate for, and connect around things like nutrition, fitness and health issues. But in order to help people get accurate health information and the support they need, it’s imperative that we minimise health content that is sensational or misleading.”
Both Facebook and Twitter have enabled advertising opposing vaccination, despite bans on such promotions on both sites.
Adverts come from influences such as David Wolfe who is deemed by the CCDH as ‘an anti-vaccine wellness guru’ who promoted a popular panacea, colloidal silver, as “my #1 recommendation under the current crisis”.
In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said: “We are working to stop harmful misinformation from spreading on our platforms and have removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of COVID-19-related misinformation.
“We reduce vaccine misinformation in News Feed, we don’t show it in search results or recommend it to you on Facebook or Instagram, we don’t allow it in ads, and we connect people with authoritative information from recognised health experts.”