Vaccine/Censorship

Vaccine/Censorship
Interest of	• Roberto Burioni • Nathalie Van Raemdonck

There are few subjects as controversial as vaccine scepticism. Nicknamed 'anti-vaxxers', the opponents are under heavy corporate and state censorship and subject to draconian state measures.

This is regardless of any actual vaccine-skeptic arguments, be they ethical, scientific - or lack of faith in the integrity of the often corporate driven and corrupt scientific studies - military/intelligence applications of vaccines or other grounds.

'Anti-vaxxers' are a broad group, and the censorship supporters often pick examples from the more outré anti-vaccine claims, ignoring and lumping together all criticism as based on pure ignorance, if not malicious intent.

Censorship of 'anti-vaxxers' is often used as a wedge to further general censorship, and often finds support even with people who otherwise oppose political censorship, and large sections of the alternative media.

Social media corporations routinely hide and ban vaccine-skeptic views, and governments have set down task forces to clamp down on vaccine opponents.

The World Health Organization said anti-vaccine views were a "top 10 global health threat" in 2019.

Vimeo

From June 2019, the video platform Vimeo bans "content that perpetuates false or misleading claims about vaccine safety", because it "can cause material, real-world harms". Using newspeak, the company stated "starting today, we are providing a 30-day grace period for documentaries that contravene our policy on vaccination content so that creators can voluntarily remove those videos. At the end of the grace period, we will begin removing anti-vaccination videos that haven’t been voluntarily removed."

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Josep Borrell	“Disinformation in times of the coronavirus can kill. We have a duty to protect our citizens by making them aware of false information, and expose the actors responsible for engaging in such practices. In today's technology-driven world, where warriors wield keyboards rather than swords and targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns are a recognised weapon of state and non-state actors, the European Union is increasing its activities and capacities in this fight.”	Josep Borrell	10 June 2020

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:MPs given guide to spotting conspiracy theories	Article	10 May 2024	Jennifer McKiernan Marianna Spring	Penny Mordaunt has commissioned a booklet for MPs on conspiracy theories.

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