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March 24, 2019 09:04 pm

'It Took 10 Seconds For Instagram To Push Me Into an Anti-Vaxx Rabbit Hole'

eatmorekix quotes Vice: It only took around ten seconds. On Wednesday, I created a fresh Instagram account, and followed 'Beware the Needle', a user with 34,000 followers which posts a steady stream of anti-vaccination content. I also followed the user's "backup" account mentioned in its bio, the creator clearly aware that Instagram may soon ban them. Instagram's "Suggested for You" feature then recommended I follow other accounts, including "Vaccines are Genocide" and "Vaccine Truth." I followed the latter, and checked which accounts Instagram now thought would be a good fit for me: another 24 accounts that were either explicitly against vaccinations in their profile description, or that posted anti-vaccine content. They included pseudo-scientists claiming that vaccines cause autism; accounts with tens of thousands of followers promising the "truth" around vaccinations through memes and images of misleading statistics, as well as individual mothers spouting the perceived, but false, dangers of vaccinating children against measles, polio, and other diseases. "Instagram told Motherboard it will be looking at different ways to minimize these sorts of recommendations," the article reports, but "did not give a more specific timeframe for this change...." "For the moment, however, Instagram remains a hot bed of easy to discover misinformation on vaccinations."

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