Amazon takes down anti vaxx documentries

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Facing public pressure and a strong-worded rebuke by an influential California congressman, Amazon has apparently pulled several anti-vaccine films from its Prime Video streaming service.

As BuzzFeed first reported, controversial documentary titles including “Vaxxed,” “Shoot ’Em Up: The Truth About Vaccines” and “We Don’t Vaccinate!” are now listed as “currently unavailable” on Prime Video. The three anti-vax movies were axed from the site on Friday ― mere hours after Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff sent a letter to Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos excoriating the tech giant for “surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.”

Such promotion of anti-vax material is a “direct threat to public health,” Schiff wrote, and reverses “progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases,” like measles.

As of late Saturday, anti-vaccine books ― including “Vaccines on Trial” and the Amazon bestseller “Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies: 400 Important Scientific Papers Summarized for Parents and Researchers” ― were still available on Amazon.

Schiff said he was particularly alarmed by the idea that Amazon was accepting paid advertising “that contains deliberate misinformation about vaccines” and was “promoting these advertisements as suggested content ahead of intended search results.”

Under fire for serving up anti-vaccine propaganda, Facebook announced today that it will remove groups and pages that share anti-vaccine misinformation from its recommendations. The company also pledged that it will stop allowing advertisers to target people who Facebook’s advertising algorithm identifies as interested in “vaccine controversies.”

The news comes three weeks after Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a stern letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, criticizing Facebook and Instagram for “surfacing and recommending messages that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.” When kids don’t get vaccinated due to thoroughly debunked myths that vaccines cause diseases like autism, dangerous diseases like measles can spread. Schiff called this “a direct threat to public health.”

One major problem area is Facebook groups where fear-mongering misinformation about vaccines can bounce around in a pseudoscientific echo chamber, The Guardian reported last month. Today, Facebook pledged to stop promoting anti-vax groups and pages in recommendations and in predictions in the search box. The company also promised to make it harder to find them through search or in the News Feed.

When asked why Facebook didn’t remove these groups and pages altogether, a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge, “Counter-speech in the form of accurate information can help create a safer and more respectful environment. As with a lot of our integrity efforts, striking the balance between enabling free expression of opinion and ensuring the safety of the community is something we are fully committed to”

Leaving groups and pages of known anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, however, still means that parents can find them, according to Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and author of the book Vaccines did not cause Rachel’s autism. He suggests that Facebook hire a chief scientific officer and staff who can weed through vaccine content and remove the misinformation.

Groups and pages aren’t the only places where vaccine misinformation has been spreading on Facebook, however. The Daily Beast also discovered that advertisers were targeting paid anti-vaccine messages at demographics “most likely to include mothers.” The ads even turned up in Washington state, The Daily Beast reports, the site of an ongoing measles outbreak. In his letter, Schiff asked Facebook to explain how much money the company brought in from anti-vax ads in the past year.

“WE ALSO REMOVED RELATED TARGETING OPTIONS, LIKE ‘VACCINE CONTROVERSIES.’”
The plans Facebook announced today include turning away anti-vax advertisements. “We also removed related targeting options, like ‘vaccine controversies,’” Facebook wrote in the blog post. That means advertisers can no longer single out people who Facebook’s advertising algorithm identifies as interested in key phrases related to known vaccine conspiracy theories, like the myth that vaccines can cause autism.

Some platforms have done better jobs than others at countering the spread of misinformation. For example, Pinterest led the way when it prohibited “promotion of false cures for terminal or chronic illnesses and anti-vaccination advice,” The Guardian reports. That meant eliminating boards for known anti-vax groups and preventing searches for things like “vaccines” from turning up results.

In its announcement, Facebook vaguely spoke about plans to surface evidence-based information about vaccines from authoritative sources in vaccine-related search results, pages, and groups. Those plans are still in the works, however, and Facebook didn’t provide more details

Amazon is removing from its online marketplace “autism cure” books that unscientifically claim children can be cured of autism with pseudoscientific methods such as ingesting and bathing in a potentially toxic form of bleach and taking medication meant to treat arsenic and lead poisoning.

Amazon confirmed Tuesday that the books “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” and “Fight Autism and Win” are no longer available, but declined to answer specific questions about why it had removed them or whether they were part of a larger cleanup effort, citing a policy of not commenting on individual accounts.

The move by Amazon comes on the heels of a report in Wired published Monday that criticized the retail giant for offering medically dubious books and dangerous methods for reversing autism spectrum disorder. For years, news organizations have pointed out Amazon’s practice of hosting books that promote vaccine and other health-related misinformation, but the pressure has intensified in recent weeks.

As of Monday, “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” sold for $28 and had 631 customer reviews and an average rating of 3.5 stars. The book extolled the healing power of chlorine dioxide, a form of bleach that adherents call the “Miracle Mineral Solution.” The book’s author Kerri Rivera, who lives in Mexico, claims 191 children have been cured of autism with a treatment of the chemical that the Food and Drug Administration warned can cause “severe nausea, vomiting and life-threatening low blood pressure from dehydration.”

The other removed title, “Fight Autism and Win” advises parents on chelation — an unproven treatment for autism that involves medicating a child with an antidote for mercury poisoning. The cure springs from the debunked theory that autism is caused by mercury exposure in childhood vaccines. Chelation therapy can cause serious side effects, including potentially deadly kidney damage, according to the Mayo Clinic. At the time of its removal, “Fight Autism and Win” sold for $25 and had a 4.8 star rating and 54 customer reviews

The books’ removal was first shared Tuesday by anti-vaccine activist Larry Cook in a newsletter to followers. Cook’s Facebook advertisements — targeting pregnant women in states with measles outbreaks — were recently banned by as part of the platform’s crackdown on misinformation.

Cook attached an image that he says was sent by Amazon, explaining why the company had removed the title from his storefront.

“During our review process, we found that the subject matter of your book is in violation of our content guidelines,” the screenshot posted by Cook stated. “As a result we cannot offer this book for sale.”