
Anti-vaxxers get around Instagram’s new hashtag controls - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.rappler.com/technology/features/247258-how-anti-vaxxers-get-around-instagram-hashtag-controls
======
donatj
Censorship failed... on the internet? What, imagine that.

Seriously, people will always find a way to say what they want to regardless
of how hard you want them not to. Trying to cut someone's tongue out will only
make them double down in their beliefs. Non-condescending truth and reason is
the better route, most crusaders though have no idea how to be kind to those
who disagree with them and do their positions regardless of validity a
disservice.

No one ever listens to let alone agrees with the person yelling at them. Ever.

~~~
mewpmewp2
As someone whose mother is anti vax and has 3 new children after 20 years of
having me, what are your suggestions? I am never condescending and I do my
research to have some arguments. I am trying to be as respectful as possible.
I have tried so many different approaches. It has not worked. Nowhere close to
it. It is not just anti vaxx, it is alternative medicine, alternative
education and alternative everything else. She quit her finance job and is
studying homeopathy and other types of alt medicine. With 3 young children I
would consider it important that they get the best future they can.

~~~
pfdietz
I suggest humor.

"Why was the anti-vaxxer's two year old crying?"

"Midlife crisis."

------
grenoire
Can we use a Mastodon instance as a containment unit? /s

It really looks like the attempts at censorship have failed, and it doesn't
look like it's working against disinformation. In fact, these people might
(and probably do) feel that because they are being censored, they are
_actually right_ but the real conspirers are trying to suppress the truth.

~~~
xoa
> _In fact, these people might (and probably do) feel that because they are
> being censored, they are actually right but the real conspirers are trying
> to suppress the truth._

As I said in another comment, you're utterly missing the point of efforts like
this. Of _course_ quarantining infected people doesn't cure them. But that's a
different goal and requires different methods, and sometimes there may be no
cure at all (or it might be very individualized, challenging and expensive,
and thus hard to scale). The idea of a quarantine is to keep vulnerable new
parts of the population from themselves being infected.

Another somewhat equivalent case would be security, which is always an
economic equation. Security would be impossible against an omniscient
omnipotent attacker, but in the real world there is no such thing. Everyone,
even the biggest government entities, face resource constraints. So security
is all about increase the resources needed by an attacker. Saying "oh putting
a lock on the door doesn't keep someone from breaking a window!" is missing
the point. It still increases the effort an attacker must go to, the risk they
must take, and in turn the security.

Remember, the effective contact rate β is determined by multiplying the
transmission risk p by the total contact rate γ.

    
    
      β = γ*p
    

Vaccines lower p and in turn reduce β, but so does lowering γ itself. And
reducing β even a smaller amount can still mean many lives saved, that it's
not 0 doesn't mean giving up.

~~~
grenoire
I see, thanks for the points. I still wonder about the longer term formation
of a smaller but more extreme group.

~~~
xoa
We all need to keep in mind when the topic of any single effort comes up that
none of this exists in isolation, it's not a purely zero sum game. Society can
multi-task. You are not wrong at all that it'd be independently also worth
also exploring how to directly reach out to and cure the existing smaller
groups too. And it's completely fair to acknowledge that sometimes damage
reduction efforts for the general population might directly make that harder.

But even so, keeping the overall number of people harmed as low as possible is
the ultimate goal. And while there is some margin for error, when the level of
vaccination drops below herd immunity there can be a sharp, non-linear
increase in harm. So while attempting engagement and changing of minds is
something to pursue in parallel, it's also necessary to at least try to
maintain the status quo in the mean time too.

------
ape4
Instagram has a "Report User" button. But anti-vax isn't one of the reasons
you can select. Or more generally: promoting bad health advice.

------
sneak
[https://instagram.com/vaccines_are_toxic](https://instagram.com/vaccines_are_toxic)

Instagram’s efforts at banning hashtags are token at best when this account
with 20k followers is found in under a minute from the #vaccine hashtag.

Read the comments on some of the posts for a fun time.

They could control this on their platform very straightforwardly if they
wished to, and they are not doing so.

It seems to me they don’t get to have it both ways: they are censoring
hashtags (unethical, as it is breaking search for their users and is quiet
editorializing), but not censoring accounts that serve the same purpose. It’s
a convenient way of keeping their numbers up while getting to pretend that
they aren’t truly responsible for the content that appears on their own
webpage. Don’t believe them. They are.

Ultimately they should either stop censoring their search engine, or ban all
of these dumb motherfuckers who are creating a public health hazard. Anything
else is just hypocrisy and lies.

Edit: here’s another one, over 40k followers.

[https://instagram.com/bewaretheneedle](https://instagram.com/bewaretheneedle)

------
jpxw
People will always find a way around these rules. Any free social network is
going to inevitably end up with groups using it for nefarious reasons. Banning
hashtags seems like it’s attempting to attack a symptom of the problem rather
than the problem itself, too.

Presumably they are doing this because of pressure from advertisers. I’m not
sure why they care so much. I can somewhat understand why they care about
YouTube, where their money (indirectly) goes to the creator making the content
they disagree with, but on Instagram that isn’t the case.

~~~
cookie_monsta
Maybe they feel some sense of responsibility that their platform is getting
used to push dangerous stupidity (just a theory).

~~~
jpxw
Maybe I’m cynical, but Instagram is a profit-making enterprise, and I imagine
that that is the foremost driver of these decisions

~~~
cookie_monsta
Maybe I'm overly idealistic but I can imagine a time when having a corporate
identity and not trying to be everything to everybody might actually become an
attractive USP among the platforms

~~~
jpxw
I mean the business model of a free social network is inherently dodgy. Unless
you think people will be willing to move to a subscription model or something

~~~
cookie_monsta
I'm not sure how your second sentence follows from your first. Advertisers
have long distanced themselves from toxic mediums. Once the tide turns on the
definition of toxic the platforms may fall in line. I believe Twitter moved in
that direction with banning political ads.

------
tu7001
I've gone through some criticize vaccines sides; they main serious claim is,
that there is no proper placebo, randomized, with accurate statistical power
study, which compare fully vaccinated children, according to, let's say,
American calendar to unvaccinated (at all). Is that true, I think there,
certainly, must be some records, even meta analysis perhaps?

------
spookybird
I don't use instagram much aside from following a few people who take cool
photos, but...

WHY would anyone who is genuinely unsure and looking for information on
vaccinations either search instagram or even make it there and be exposed to
these hashtags. It's not exactly an information rich platform.

It seems like people who are already established in the anti vax movement
would be the only ones following this hashtag. In that case, censoring these
tags does seem like it's a bit over the top. While I believe they are wrong,
people should be allowed to think what they want and even share it with others
who are like minded.

I just don't buy the argument that this is in some way protecting people from
being exposed to misinformation and is simply facebook 'vaxwashing' for feel
good credibility.

~~~
mft_
I like your comment, and it’s kind of comforting - because it means we don’t
have to worry too much, as you suggest the anti-vaxxers are like a neat little
self-contained cult who don’t venture out of their compound.

However, in reality, it’s probably a gradual process of belief change or
formation - people don’t move from slightly unsure to frothing-at-the-mouth
anti-vaxxer overnight. And this sort of disinformation may well be accessed
and become influential to people who are part-way through that process.

------
xoa
It's disappointing that so many of the immediate root comments in this
discussion continue to so thoroughly engage in straw man binary thinking and
misunderstand what Free Speech is and entails.

To the first, the goal here is harm reduction in the form of the slowing the
spread of infection, not a black and white magical changing of everyone's
mind. No one has any illusions that existing anti-vaxxers will in any way be
cured by steps like this, but the point is to reduce and slow the numbers of
new people who will be infected by anti-vax thinking. Anti-vax thinking is
like a disease itself, multiplying and spreading through regular human
channels and exploiting our existing frameworks and thinking. Just as
quarantines or vaccines themselves do not cure somebody who is already
infected with a real world disease, quarantines and "vaccination" won't
themselves cure somebody with corrupted thinking. But that doesn't mean they
aren't useful tools, because real lives are on the line, and the system does
have a certain amount of give and take in terms of what the critical level is
for herd immunity (fortunately, since there will always be a small fraction of
people with genuine medical issues like compromised immune systems). It's not
necessary to keep everyone in the population vaccinating, with many it's only
around 90-95%. It's understood that anti-vaxxers will mutate in response to
new efforts to resist them, and in turn containment steps must also adapt.
Nothing odd about that. It is and will always be a _process_ as with many
things in life.

Just as in the real world concentrated groupings of people, faster travel, and
faster shipping systems can accelerate the spread of existing and new strains,
social media which brings together many people and accelerates their exchanges
could also be a vector. Success for any given effort comes from how much is
slows things down for a time, that's all.

To the second, for various reasons many people have gotten the odd notion in
their minds that "Free Speech" is about ideas being equal, or about it being
free. It isn't, and never was. Quite the contrary, free speech is important
precisely because ideas are _not_ equal, and in fact most of them are trash.
The goal is to try to make a process that, over long periods of time, will
tend to eventually sift out better ideas and adapt to changing conditions that
make older discarded ideas worthy of consideration again. Further, centralized
power inevitably faces pressure to crystalize and serve smaller interests. So
if the coercive centralized physical power of government (or equivalent
entities) is used to control actual thoughts and expressions, the result long
term has tended to be poor.

However, that very much does not apply to social pressure, or to whether
individual private people/entities choose to associate with given ideas and/or
lend them their own private economic support. _Not_ doing so is a critical
part of Free Speech as well. If somebody thinks ideas are truly awful, they
can and _should_ deny any support, lobby others to deny support, ostracize
those with such ideas, etc. Fighting such pressure and bearing the
consequences is itself part of the gauntlet that ideas must face, and always
have faced. None of this is new. People have the right to go create their own
services, groups, and put their own soap boxes out, but others have the equal
right to have nothing to do with them. The arguments back and forth are at the
heart of the process, and the process is never, ever done.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> " _To the first, the goal here is harm reduction in the form of the slowing
> the spread of infection, not a black and white magical changing of everyone
> 's mind._"

Of course, that argument can be used to justify "quarantining" (i.e.
silencing) literally any group based on what definition of "harm" is being
used, and therefore is null and void. Better hope society never changes so
that your beliefs are unpopular.

Moreover, as the article demonstrates, "quarantining" doesn't even work. A lot
of rights we enjoy today came about because the backers of the status quo were
unable to suppress the popular movements that back them despite keeping them
out of the press and broadcast media as much as they could.

~~~
xoa
> _Of course, that argument can be used to justify "quarantining" (i.e.
> silencing) literally any group based on what definition of "harm" is being
> used, and therefore is null and void._

Indeed it can, welcome to Free Speech. The whole point though is that those
that believe in the idea are also free to keep arguing for it, and to keep the
flame alive, and if it has merit they will ultimately be able to convince
society to change its mind. That might well take years or even decades

> _Better hope society never changes so that your beliefs are unpopular._

This is the sort of lazy, passive thinking that is the source of much of the
problem people have understanding this. There is no "hope" in free speech,
only effort, forever, with no guarantees of success. Because there is no
trustable guiding oracle, that's the whole issue and always has been. It's
turtles all the way down.

> _Moreover, as the article demonstrates, "quarantining" doesn't even work._

The article demonstrates no such thing. In fact, you yourself are being self-
contradictory right here! If you actually thought it didn't work, why would
you even care at all? You can't BOTH claim that private entities exercising
their freedom of association and refusing to support ideas they believe wrong
is a threat, which you do, AND claim that it doesn't do anything. It's one or
the other.

> _A lot of rights we enjoy today came about because the backers of the status
> quo were unable to suppress the popular movements that back them despite
> keeping them out of the press and broadcast media as much as they could._

A lot of the rights we enjoy today came about because those against the status
quo very much struggled against the sensibilities of the mainstream through
enormous, sustained effort. Not because they were handed over control of
whatever media they wanted. Being banned from social media or not being
offered your own column in a newspaper or whatever else doesn't stop you from
working to get your message out in other ways.

People like you love to CLAIM you want freedom of speech and association, but
inevitably you only want it for yourselves.

------
darkerside
Probably sounds like a silly question, but what exactly _are_ the
scientifically understood risks of vaccinating? And is it a bad idea to
continue finding research into whether vaccines do carry risks that are less
understood?

It seems like questions like these are under self censorship in the scientific
community these days, perhaps in fear that allowing their validity might
encourage parents not to vaccinate their kids. But shutting them out of
scientific discourse only drives them underground.

~~~
FreeFull
Oral polio vaccine can rarely recombine can sometimes recombine into a
virulent form, which can infect people that haven't been vaccinated (This does
not happen with the injectable form of the vaccine).

Also, extremely rarely, someone's immune system can react rather badly to a
vaccine. It's also possible to be allergic to one of the ingredients in the
vaccine.

~~~
darkerside
Thank you for engaging instead of downvoting. It's like people don't want to
admit there could be issues with any vaccine, which is of course untrue. It
doesn't mean they aren't the right call _on balance_, but pretending there are
literally no risks is going to alienate people. It's reminiscent of the war on
drugs (albeit in reverse), where marijuana was demonized, but the truth was
obviously so different.

Those are scientifically understood and accepted risks. With the limitations
of with epidemiological studies, and difficulty associated with replicating
vaccine studies in any other way, it's hard to justify the level of certainty
I see in the scientific community.

------
deith
Why did Instagram ban hashtags like #vaccinescauseautism in the first place? I
mean is there any other reason than to look good in the eyes of others?

~~~
jrockway
I assume their advertisers don't like being associated with the anti-
vaccination movement.

There is also a lot of pressure on the Facebooks and Googles of the world to
censor things. Politicians and traditional media are the big abusers here (and
it always feels like it's motivated by self-interest rather than the greater
good). I think these companies should push back, and they probably want to
(it's expensive to be the police), but when Congress threatens to investigate,
what choice do you have but to do what they say? It's unconstitutional to make
a law about what you can and can't say on the Internet, but it's not
unconstitutional to say "hey, maybe censor some stuff and we won't look too
hard into what taxes you're paying".

I have a surefire solution to the problems of fake news, anti-vaxxing, etc.
Give every American a world-class science education for free, and this problem
solves itself in a generation. Nobody wants to pay for that, though, so
instead we blame Instagram. It's cheaper and we feel like we're doing
something.

~~~
cookie_monsta
> It's unconstitutional to make a law about what you can and can't say on the
> Internet

I don't think that's true. In fact there are various categories of speech that
aren't protected and the category of false medical claims appears to be in a
grey area.

~~~
pfdietz
The limitations on the first amendment are very strictly defined, and anti-vax
would not fall under any of them.

~~~
cookie_monsta
Not a lawyer, but the right to incite actions that would harm others has been
off the table for over 100 years. I'd imagine you could build an interesting
case around that one.

~~~
jrockway
Inciting imminent lawless action is something like "lynch him!", not "after a
careful reading of many studies, I believe that vaccines cause autism".

Look, I don't want to defend these people, but any limitations on the first
amendment are not what's going to bring this movement to an end.

~~~
cookie_monsta
It's not the lawless action exception that I'm talking about, it's the harm to
others one. The classic example is yelling "fire" in a crowded building which
I think has its parallels to yelling "autism" in response to vaccines.

Interestingly, the precedent-setting case was with a guy distributing
pamphlets persuading people not to enlist for WW1 which doesn't seem remotely
close to any of these scenarios.

The real reason why it's a moot point, though, is that no government would
have the political will to legislate on something as divisive as this.

~~~
pfdietz
That classic case is no longer good law. Consider the 1960s anti-war movement.

------
imglorp
Remember this is not a few trolls, this is state sponsored warfare with actual
harm: sick and dead people plus sowing distrust in the science and medical
fields. It needs to be handled like such, at the source.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-vax-movement-russian-
troll...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-vax-movement-russian-trolls-
fueled-anti-vaccination-debate-in-us-by-spreading-misinformation-twitter-
study/)

[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/meet-the-new-york-
couple-d...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/meet-the-new-york-couple-
donating-millions-to-the-anti-vax-movement/ar-AAD6TUV)

~~~
dan-robertson
I don’t really buy the idea that there’s some secret Russian conspiracy
tricking Americans into believing things that are obviously false. There are
plenty of gullible Americans and there are plenty of real life Americans who
passionately believe that vaccines cause all manner of ills. I don’t think
Russians have much to do with this spreading. Plenty of Americans fall for
all-American pyramid schemes without some sophisticated Russian plot.

Are we also to believe that this is some long running conspiracy the Russians
have been executing since the 19th century when people began opposing
vaccinations?

~~~
imglorp
Respectfully disagree: I don't think conspiracy is the right word.

Not just vax. It's well established who is participating and that it's an
overt, broad disinformation campaign against everything from politics to flat
earth.

Any and all chaos in the West benefits Putin. Read some of Garry Kasparov's
writings for a more inside view.

------
im3w1l
I wonder when Instagram will start suppressing religion.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Surely not all of it -
[https://www.google.com/search?q=cue+the+green+god+ted](https://www.google.com/search?q=cue+the+green+god+ted)

------
mschuster91
There is only one solution for anti-vaxxers: _jailing them and cutting them
off of society_.

Yes, this runs contrary to the US dogma of "free speech", but anti-vaxxers are
murderers-to-be. You're not gonna get rid of them by playing whack-a-mole with
hashtags or banning them, you're only gonna get rid of them by locking them
up.

