Social Media Giants Must Be Forced To Stop Anti-Vaxx Lies

‘Worrying numbers of people say they will refuse to be vaccinated’

- Stephen Pollard

In a welcome move, social media giant Instagram last week closed the account of Robert Kennedy Junior. You might wonder what they have against the son of Robert Kennedy, younger brother of former US president John Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy Junior had more than 800,000 followers. They were there because his account was almost entirely devoted to anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories, which has been his life’s work – which opponents claim is a combination of scaremongering, distortion of facts, and outright lies.

No matter how many times legitimate scientists expose the deceit behind the anti-vaxxers, they gain followers. There are, after all, always people willing to believe anything – even such madness as the notion that Bill Gates is behind Covid and is using the pandemic to enrich himself, and that 5G masts are a form of mass control of people.

These kinds of lies were bad enough when they have focused on the MMR (Measles Mumps and Rubella) vaccine after fraudulent scientist Andrew Wakefield used false data to create a scare that lives on to this day. But in the age of coronavirus, social media has taken the problem to a new level.