By Brandy Zadrozny - NBC News
For years, vaccination advocates and misinformation researchers demanded Facebook take action against the largest and most influential anti-vaccination pages.
So, although with some concern, they welcomed the news
last week that the social network banned some of the most popular and prolific accounts that group the anti-vaccination movements
.
These are pages that had also disclosed misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine to millions of people.
However, its impact continues.
Although extremism experts and public health advocates view the removal of anti-vaccination accounts as a positive initiative, new research shows that
the greatest threat to public confidence in a COVID-19 vaccine comes from groups of Smaller and better connected Facebook,
which in recent months began to broadcast messages against vaccination.
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"What we're seeing with COVID is something that was already in the system," said Neil Johnson, a physicist at George Washington University who studies extremism online.
"I was ready for that at the end of 2019," he added.
While many COVID-19 vaccines continue to be developed, health officials have warned that public adoption will be crucial to ensure that enough of the population is immunized to stop the spread of the virus.
Experts say there is no exact threshold on the percentage of people who must be vaccinated to stop the spread
, but it is expected to be at least 60% of the population.
But public opinion on vaccines is mixed.
Only 42% of people in the United States said they would take a dose of the vaccine when it becomes available,
according to a YouGov survey published in August.
A Pew Research Center survey released in September found a significant decrease from May to September in people who said they would get the vaccine if it were immediately available.
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In May, Johnson and a team of researchers published an article in the scientific journal Nature that suggested that the anti-vaccination movement had a great responsibility for those doubts.
It showed that
although the online anti-vaccination groups were smaller than those that supported vaccines, there were more, their messages were more diverse, emotional and persuasive
, so they were better at spreading those messages outside their groups.
In other words, the anti-vaccine groups reached more people.
Research into an article by Johnson and his team, which is currently being revised for publication, shows that members of communities previously considered unrelated or "undecided" about vaccines (pet lover groups, school pages from parents, yoga fans and foodies, for example) are increasingly connecting with the anti-vaccination movement.
"It's like a tumor that is growing," Johnson said.
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Although Facebook, the favorite platform for anti-vaccination activists, has taken a number of steps to limit the reach of anti-vaccine content, the movement has thrived during the pandemic, a success due to a shift toward disinformation and
a strategy of communication that has allowed this message to bypass the policies of the platforms and reach users outside of their network.
Facebook spokeswoman Andrea Vallone said in a statement that the company works to connect people with accurate information about vaccines and prohibits misleading ads.
"We also continue to remove misinformation about COVID-19 that could cause imminent physical harm and direct people to our coronavirus information center, which is available in 189 countries," he said.
A report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a UK-based non-profit organization, found that
the anti-vaccination movement gained around eight million followers since 2019
.
Conspiracy theories about the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine have flooded social media, particularly on Instagram and Facebook, according to a new report from First Draft, a global nonprofit that investigates misinformation online.
Those conspiracy theories - which claimed that the vaccine contributed to various forms of population control driven by the "deep state," private philanthropists, or even Satan - weren't limited to fringe anti-vaccine groups, First Draft reported. resonated in external networks.
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Disparate communities including libertarian, new age, Qanon, and anti-government groups, as well as more mainstream communities, appear to be united around opposition to the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine.
The largest pages banned by Facebook had already prepared for an offensive.
This month, Facebook removed the page for
The HighWire
, an online anti-vaccine program, for violating policies on "misinformation that could cause physical harm
," the company said.
YouTube removed the channel from the show in July after reports that host Del Bigtree was downplaying the severity of the coronavirus pandemic on his show and suggesting that viewers are intentionally exposing themselves to COVID-19.
According to a post on the Facebook page of Informed Consent Action Network, Bigtree's nonprofit organization,
The HighWire
had posted more than 500 videos that attracted more than 30 million views.
The page had 360,500 followers when it was removed.
An account of
The HighWire
remains active on Instagram, owned by Facebook, where it has 199,000 followers.
Bigtree did not respond to a request for comment.
But it wasn't vaccine misinformation that led to the most popular and prolific anti-vaccination activist on social media getting kicked off Facebook this month.
In the end, after years of building an audience on Facebook, Larry Cook, a California social media marketer, and his private group of 200,000 members, Stop Mandatory Vaccination, were removed for violating the platform's policies against promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Cook, who did not respond to a request for comment, warned his fans that a ban would soon be imposed and for months he promoted his accounts on 11 other alternative platforms.
Cook's and Bigtree's pages and groups continued to grow on Facebook despite a move in March 2019 to reduce the reach of anti-vaccine content during a measles outbreak
and provisions implemented during the pandemic to reduce misinformation. on health
due to warnings from the World Health Organization against "conspiracy theorists promoting misinformation and undermining the response to the outbreak."
Researchers have observed that live streaming features became a method for anti-vaccine activists to continue to reach their audiences.
COVID-19, in particular, also attracted prominent anti-vaccine figures, said Renee DiResta, who studies disinformation as a research manager at Stanford University's Internet Observatory.
"The anti-vaccine movement recognized that [Covid-19] was an opportunity to create content, so when people searched for it, they found anti-
vaccine
content
,
" he
said, "they saw that as an opportunity not only to erode trust in the vaccine. of COVID, but also to make people doubt about routine childhood vaccinations. "
But Facebook's efforts have met with limited success.
Your audience may “not know where to go and how to navigate to those platforms,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public who studies the anti-vaccine movement.
Despite the promotion, only a handful of users have followed Cook and Bigtree on those new platforms.
"Too many people are deeply engaged with Facebook, which has the distinct advantage that it is the platform that people are on, it is easy to navigate, and it is the way users stay connected with friends and family," he said. Koltai.
And users don't need to switch platforms to keep up with the biggest anti-vaccination movements.
There are still an unknown number of private groups, spaces that have been centers of disinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.
These include the 224,000-member Vaccination Reeducation Discussion Forum, a private anti-vaccination group focused exclusively on COVID-19 vaccines.
“It's like an insurgency,” Johnson said, “
and the difficult thing about fighting an insurgency is that we never knew where they were.
There was like an invisible web behind them.
Often times, the groups that were more prominent, the ones that caught his eye because they were the largest, did not necessarily mean that they were the most important in the network.
His new research shows that
the anti-vaccine movement has effectively used the pandemic to reach more than 100 million
susceptible Facebook
users
and appears to be winning the battle for hearts and minds.
If so, the ban on accounts with large followers is unlikely to have a real impact on the anti-vaccination movement.
“The anti-vaccination network tries to convey narratives, convey stories, and support each other as an insurgency
,” Johnson said, “and, like an insurgency, it is rooted in the majority civilian population.
That is his strength ”.