Instagram To Block Hashtags That Spread Anti-Vaccination Misinformation

Not long after taking some much-needed steps to prevent the flow of anti-vaccination misinformation on Facebook, the company is now putting similar measures in place for Instagram, the popular photo-sharing network that it owns. According to the company, Instagram will now hide search results for hashtags that consistently provide false information about vaccines.

Instagram will block access to the hashtags which return misinformation that’s meant to prevent people from getting vaccinated. “If the hashtag was #vaccines1234, if it contained a high proportion of known vaccine misinformation, we would block that hashtag entirely,” said Karina Newton. She’s the global head of Instagram’s public policy.

What the company means by known vaccine misinformation is the information that’s verified to be false by the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and other such organizations. Instagram did clarify that posts with anti-vaccine views that have not been confirmed as false wouldn’t be taken down and they will continue to remain up.

The photo-sharing network is also going to review posts that are removed because of the misinformation policies and utilize machine learning to understand which hashtags they’re associated with. If there’s a high proportion of misinformation on a particular hashtag, it will then be blocked.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Instagram