GoFundMe Bans Anti-Vaxxers Who Raise Money to Spread Misinformation
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
1) I unequivocally believe all anti-vaxxers are wrong, 2) I absolutely support efforts to fight their misinformation, 3) I don't even necessarily think it was a bad decision by gofundme to do this;
Now, what I'd like to question is the effectiveness of taking down those campaigns. My points:
1) I doubt that an average user scrolling through gofundme would see and decide to support such a campaign, I'd imagine most of the funding comes from the links being directly shared
2) The above makes me think such campaigns will simply move to a GoFundMe competitor and be equally (un?)successful, effectively nullifying any changes
3) Gives more attention + victim points to anti vaxxers
4) If their discourse is further pushed out of mainstream platforms, does it actually reduce the spread of their ideas or just limit their exposure to counter-arguments and public condemnation?
Edit: formatting
1. Business
2. Ethics
The ethics effect the business. GoFundMe does not want to be known as a company that helped an organization allow the resurgence of Polio for instance. From a business standpoint, GoFundMe needs to maintain positive PR if it wants to keep making money. It is none of GoFundMe's concern if these anti-vax individuals or organizations move to a different platform.
I just wanted to bring up the point from a societal perspective, since it's society as a whole who often calls for actions like this from big companies (making it a "good" decision for them even if just for the PR). Are we going to see a positive change in society from this, is it just irrelevant in the end, or could we even be making the issue harder to fight in the long run?
I don't necessarily have a strong opinion on what the answer to that question is, it's just genuinely a question.
That's probably true, although I really don't know why it's particularly relevant. GoFundMe probably doesn't want people funding anti-vaccine campaigns regardless of how they arrived at the web page.
> 2) The above makes me think such campaigns will simply move to a GoFundMe competitor and be equally (un?)successful, effectively nullifying any changes
How does that nullify any changes? There are a finite number of crowdfunding platforms, and this reduces the number by one. And of course, this is a particularly large and prominent one.
> 3) Gives more attention + victim points to anti vaxxers
I don't really buy the "don't give them what they want" argument. If they really do want press about how harmful their practices are and how children are dying because of their campaigns, well okay, I'm fine with giving them this desire. I think that they should be "victims" of de-platforming, even if that's what they want. It's theoretically possible to get the Streisand effect, where their platform is increased, but I highly doubt that's likely when you remove them from huge platforms with massive market share, like YouTube or GoFundMe.
> 4) If their discourse is further pushed out of mainstream platforms, does it actually reduce the spread of their ideas or just limit their exposure to counter-arguments and public condemnation?
There are probably some anti-vaccers who are genuinely mislead, but the prominent voices in the movement almost certainly are aware of the invalidity of their claims. I don't think we have any lack of exposure to pro-vaccine arguments.
The impact on society won't come from the number of crowdfunding platforms, but from the number of campaigns and their reach. My point with 1) and 2) was that neither is necessarily affected by this.
> likely when you remove them from huge platforms with massive market share, like YouTube
It's really super hard to fully remove an idea from social media platforms. It's like playing whack-a-mole. They tend to find more ways of spreading the information.
If the discourse itself is moved to another platform, my concern is that it might be a much more hospitable environment for such ideas to fester. And I'm not certain we will significantly reduce the spreading of these platforms.
Context: I work in Trust and Safety and am genuinely concerned with how to best address these issues, which I fear has fallen to the same pitfalls as many political discussions (i.e. get the favorable public opinion to stay in power for the mandate even if it means sweeping the dust under the carpet and let it build up)
What do you object about these two medical doctors issues with vaccines? I would consider them more prominent than you or I, so their opinion/knowledge should hold more weight than ours.
Yet, but the very limited standards set, they would be called "anti-vaxxers", even though Dr. Halverson provides vaccine services for children and familes.
Dr. Richard Halvorsen (England)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM
Dr. Suzanne Humphries (USA)
Arguing to authority is a logical fallacy any ways. Peer reviewed papers does not mean they are true. There are plenty of peer reviewed papers that disagree with each other or have results that are not reproducible.
Edit: I recommend anyone that think "peer review" means that a paper is automatically true to research how the peer review process works and also the results. (there was a scandal this past year or so on peer reviewed papers, most of them medical papers)
Of course, the real solution is education: both of the purveyors of misinformation and of those who fall victim to it. That's a multi-generational process that should ideally happen in parallel with short-term fixes.
You could replace that phrase with many different ideologies. Would you?
A huge part of this sort of thing is driven by distrust of institutions, which has been in long term decline. Can you trust doctors or are they in the pockets of big pharma? Is the government suppressing vital information related to the health of your child because they're afraid to admit they were wrong? Etc etc.
Attempting to suppress/oppress these people to shut them up is a bad idea because it'll simply be taken as evidence that there is in fact some sort of malign pro-vaccination conspiracy, that their arguments can't be rebutted, and they'll become more dedicated to spreading 'the truth' as they see it.
This is a typically short sighted decision by corporates. If GoFundMe don't like anti-vaxxers, they should make a video shooting down common anti-vaxxer ideas and then embed it at the top of every crowdfund related to it, so everyone who wants to contribute money to it is exposed to the counter arguments. Heck, make watching the vid mandatory before you can donate. But shutting down legal discourse is bad bad bad and will only inflame the situation.
A widespread highly contagious fatal disease puts society at an even greater risk: panic. There's all kinds of examples of humans, even in relatively modern times, trying to eject sick people from society. And that's the kind version. Locking sick people in barns and churches, and burning them down, barricading burning entire villages to the ground due to fear of contagion.
You think the anti-vaxxers are terrorists? Not a good word anyway, but when the general population starts to freak out over a disease, that will be terror. The idea we're really that different from medieval times in the face of a virulent contagion is hilarious to me, especially with all the fantastic obsession with zombie shows.
I am all for companies taking public health into account, however I also think this in some part makes more people look into anti-vaxxination...because so much of it depends on a belief of conspiracy against the public. It's a hard animal to tackle.
The logical fallacy of “censorship is okay when I know it’s wrong” sets such a dangerous precedent, yet it’s downright celebrated by America’s left.
It’s quite frightening.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/
Anyway, GoFundMe isn't in the business of informing anyone about anything.
This is how the future of censorship will work. And there won't be a legal protection against censorship because of this.
But I agree, GoFundMe can legally block anything they want.
They can block anything they want because that's what free speech means.
I'd like to see a reference for this -- there's plenty of evidence in favor of vaccinations out there from legitimate government and commercial sources, yet many anti-vaxxers dismiss those sources as "biased" or "in the pockets of big pharma", so it's not clear how presenting more of the information they already have access to will change anything.
But I can see how presenting less anti-vax "data" would be beneficial to public health.
How is it better to have _less_ "data" to base potentially life threatening choices on?
No medical procedure is 100% safe - even if they injected you with sterile saline, that's not 100% safe.
The risk of adverse effects from the measles vaccine is around one in a million doses. In comparison, you've got around a 1 in 8000 chance of dying in a car accident this year.
There's a misconception that public health policy is about keeping you (or your child) healthy -- it's not, it's about promoting health across the entire population. Even if there's a tiny risk of an adverse reaction to a vaccine to your child, it's outweighed by the global reduction in serious illness. It's a part of living in society -- you should not get to make medical decisions that are proven to cause serious problems for others just to eliminate a minuscule risk to yourself.
I wonder why this position does not inform people's view on other things in life, like driving or gun ownership or tourism or taxation or consumerism or..
In truth, i like this approach far more (and have personally find it more effective in neutralising antivax points of view) than the rabid shouting of the vocal minority of provaxxers. It shows you acknowledge them and their concerns as people who (right or wrong) actually deeply care, but position their actions in direct relation to the consequences.
The recent increase of people who believe the Earth is flat seems to be direct evidence against your claim. Scientific and information literacy is not a widespread skill.
How so, exactly? I don't see any reason to think that the truth tends to prevail, except in processes where people are genuinely interested in discovering the truth. In fact, if you're not interested in discovering the truth, I would say that the truth is mostly powerless.
An example of how the truth is stifled in China because you can't discuss an historical event.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-03/how-china-has-censore...
If more people believe the Earth is flat today versus 20 years ago, the truth is not prevailing: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/28/americas...
It is both. What it's not is a First Amendment issue. GoFundMe, a private entity, is deciding not to do business with a group of people. Anti-vaxxers are not a protected class (like race). This is totally legitimate and a healthy part of a democratic society.
One's view have consequences. The First Amendment just says they shouldn't have consequences from the government.
That said, yes, public safety is a real concern.
And that all the adults that got vaccinated as a child in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe even the 90s are no longer immune? But none of those people have been required to get immunized again to maintain herd immunity.
This means we've been at 50% coverage or less for decades. Maybe there is some missing information that needs to be discussed?
Also, Merck has been caught falsifying their data on at least one of their vaccines for decades. But this is not commonly shared or known.
https://www.courthousenews.com/Class-Says-Merck-Lied-About-M...
Furthermore younger kids are more likely to be killed or seriously affected by illnesses than healthy adults.
That is moving the goal posts. If adults get measles, they can pass it on to the kids. And the stated belief is that 95% immunity is required for herd protection.
Yet, we simply don't have that, and there isn't mass sickness everywhere.
Many of them might decline in efficacy but that can mean 90% effective which is very good. Furthermore many of them have mitigating effects if you do get the diseases anyway that reduce risk of death or complications.
Isn't that just taking 'anti-vaxxers' out of the gene pool?
I say this as someone who isn't anti-vaccine per se but only anti-unsafe-vaccines. And the safety of vaccines is very much in question today, which you wouldn't know if you only read and believe the mainstream media.
We also have the power to eliminate some illnesses completely so that vaccines are no longer needed in the future generations. We've done this with smallpox and we are close with polio.
As far as "safe/unsafe," that's disingenuous, there's no such thing - no medical intervention is completely without risk, but we know that the benefits of vaccines on the marketplace today unequivocally outweigh the (very minor) risks for the vast majority of healthy people.
I highly doubt gofundme had a personal conviction over this issue. This is a company that is being influenced by an outside source. That should be concerning.
Is this not a trivial counterargument to your claims: anyone that was harmed by a vaccine is eligible for a lot of money. Yet few people reach for this fund.
I've never heard an anti-vaxxer say things such as "It's God's (or Gaia's) Will that Johnny died of measles."
They believe, wrongly in my opinion, that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines. To me, that's legitimate dissent.
Given the stakes, maybe GoFundMe did the right thing.
But what's an acceptable threshold of risk?
Because, for various reasons, anti-vaxxing has become a political problem as well as a health problem. Maybe more so.
The political aspect - i.e. GoFundMe being vulnerable to political charges of endangering the public - is probably what drove GoFundMe to institute the ban.
Which leaves other politically charged uses of GoFundMe vulnerable.
I don't get it. How is this any more legitimate than actually being a Luddite and saying "technology and modern medicine is bad"?
Would you say that racism and bigotry against minorities becomes legitimate if it's phrased as "this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you"? Because that's actually a pretty classic feature of racist propaganda.
>this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you = talks about people.
HN, just fucking delete my account and ban my IP address, as you obviously have a huge fucking problem with my fair-mindedness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM
But if we shut down all discussion about it, even _rational_ discussions will be censored.
Here's a peer reviewed article on science that is "peer-reviewed". His conclusion? It's based on "belief".
Additionally, the way the government has cozied up to vaccination companies to prevent nearly any lawsuit from taking place related to vaccines seems ridiculous. Vaccines do represent a public good, and as such some protection seems appropriate, but to make it seem like the best possible thing we could ever do to protect populations? I think that's a touch overreaching.
People should use vaccines, absolutely. However, vaccine tech has not progressed much in 50 years and part of this may be attributed to the protection of vaccine companies.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/asia/faulty-vaccine-china-int...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/world/middleeast/syrian-c...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-gerberding/former-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...
Additionally, none of these talk about intentionally bad vaccines, which is one of your claims.
The CDC acknowledges that batches of bad vaccines do occur. How can a vaccine be bad except that (1) it doesn't work or (2) it actually hurts the patient?
Also, people from the CDC do leave to work for pharma companies. That is true...so a revolving door exists. Decide for yourself if that could produce unwanted collusion.
The other links support my claims that Vaccine companies send shoddy vaccines to other countries even if they are rejected here. World health should be about more than profit. Vaccines can be helpful, but not without honest discussions which Vaccine suppliers seem unwilling to have.
Additionally, linking to vaxxed is like linking infowars: https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/vaxx...
Can we stop invoking unsupported non-binding dicta offered to illustrate the decision in a case which has since been overturned and is widely regarded as a travesty infringing on core political speech as if it were some kind of firm legal principal useful as a yardstick against which speech can be measured to determine if it is unprotected?
Clear and present danger. Both yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre and refusing to vaccinate are a clear danger. But only one of them is clear and present. For comparison, yelling "fire" in an empty plaza would not be penalized.
Not giving your kid vaccinations is stupid. But on the scale of "ways you can mess up your kid," it's pretty mild. In terms of the amount of harm that non-vaccinated kids do to everyone else, it's extremely near zero. Almost certainly, if you drive a car more than a few times a year, you're endangering those around you more than any anti-vaxxer is.
And if you actually want to convince anti-vaxxers to change their ways, this is clearly not the right way to do it. Pouring hate on people feels (scarily) good in a lot of ways, but it doesn't change the minds of the people you're demonizing. Is there any clearer demonstration of this than the complete persistence of anti-vaxxing sentiment in the face of steadily increasing screams of protest over the last 5 years?
Measles and other dangerous diseases returning to the US after being iradicated is not a small issue. This effects other children's lives. It's selfish and harmful and we have a safe reliable solution.
People have become complacent to the horrible effects of diseases because of the protections vaccines have provided them over the last 50+ years.
In the years before a measles vaccine, there were about 500 deaths per year from measles (in the US). This was when the population was about half of what it is now, so if we returned fully to that rate, there would be about 1,000 deaths per year from measles today.
There were no deaths from measles in the years 2016 or 2017, per this document from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/downloads/measlesdataandstatssli...
As I said, it's dumb not to get your kids vaccinated. I wish I could get vaccinated to more things! It's like a super power!
But the amount of actual harm that anti-vaxxers are causing is miniscule, certainly deeply out of proportion with the hate that they're getting.
And if you do sincerely desire to keep as many people as possible from getting the measles, rather than desire to feel the rush of heaping hate on people, then again, let me suggest that the current tactics are not working, and that de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
Good, because you're an example of someone who is complacent. This is what complacency looks like:
> but on a factual level, most kids who don't get vaccinations do not get measles. Most who do get measles have a few weeks of discomfort and get over it. Most who do get measles do not give it to anyone else except maybe other unvaccinated kids.
"Most." "Most." "Most."
Let's say only one child in the entire U.S. will die of measles over the next 10 years. Now, let's say you know it will be your child, or your neice, or your friend's child. Still seem acceptable?
The point is, there is no acceptable level of measles incidence in the U.S.
Zero. Period.
> de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This is not true. The rhetoric around vaccines started out de-escalated, because everyone thought the benefits were so obvious they did not need defending. That's what allowed anti-vaccine scammers to gain mindshare in the first place. Only by aggressive counteracting the anti-vaccine message will that be reversed.
So my kids will, for example, go to school rather than be home-schooled or tutored.
My kids are allowed to travel on BART, despite their propensity for touching everything and putting their hands in their mouths. And, like, I'll try to teach them not to do that, but it's not like I'll smack their hands.
My kids will probably at some point travel abroad to places where there are disease risks that there aren't in the United States, and while if travel vaccinations are available we'll certainly take advantage of them, we won't refuse to travel to Africa because malaria exists.
Also, my children are allowed to travel by car -- even in the cars of say their friends' parents who I haven't extensively vetted for maximally safe driving habits.
And they're allowed to go into San Francisco and Oakland, cities that are statistically more violent than their home town of San Bruno.
You can't remove all risk from people's lives -- even your own children's -- and if you try to, you end up making bad decisions.
This is a microcosm of what happens when you try to make policy around zero tolerance policies. Look, I wish that everyone would vaccinate their kids. But it simply doesn't make sense to sacrifice every other priority in the world to try to chase down a very small number of people who object to doing that.
And aggressively countering the message isn't working -- which we would have expected if we had seen every other case of aggressive messaging, which broadly speaking is more about virtue signaling than convincing people. Anti-vaxxers today are much, much, much more rooted in their opinions than they were at the beginning.
This is because other children do not contract measles because they have been vaccinated for Measles, as have their parents. It's not because Measles is hard to contract, it's because Measles is uncommon in the modern Western world. It's uncommon in the modern Western world because people have been vaccinated for it.
> In the years before a measles vaccine, there were about 500 deaths per year from measles (in the US). This was when the population was about half of what it is now, so if we returned fully to that rate, there would be about 1,000 deaths per year from measles today.
1000 easily preventable deaths. Just because 1000 people isn't a large, scary number doesn't mean that it's a small number either. A single person dying of a preventable illness is heartbreaking. Each one of those 1000 people who die are someone's son, daughter, wife, husband, brother, sister, aunt, etc. What value do you place on human life?
> There were no deaths from measles in the years 2016 or 2017, per this document from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/downloads/measlesdataandstatssli....
Because of Vaccines. It even says right there in the link: "Measles remains a leading cause of vaccine-preventable infant mortality."
> But the amount of actual harm that anti-vaxxers are causing is miniscule, certainly deeply out of proportion with the hate that they're getting.
You say this until your child goes to kindergarten with an un-vaccinated child and contracts a deadly illness.
In addition, anti-vaxxers are doing harm to their own children. A parent's responsibility is to protect their children. I understand that anti-vax parents think hey are protecting their children by refusing vaccines, but it is objectively the opposite. Anti-vax parents are exposing their children to deadly illnesses that used to kill people at an alarming rate before vaccination was common. They are doing this to a child who cannot understand the implications of these decisions.
> And if you do sincerely desire to keep as many people as possible from getting the measles, rather than desire to feel the rush of heaping hate on people, then again, let me suggest that the current tactics are not working, and that de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This I can partially agree with. However, cognitive bias is very real and very powerful. Clearly, hate and spite are not a good way to communicate with anti-vaxxers, but how many children need to die and how may horrible illnesses need to become common before they realize the errors of their ways?
Lots of people do lots of harm to their children. The amount of harm that anti-vaxxers do to their children is small. The amount of harm that anti-vaxxers do to anyone else's children is like 100x smaller.
Lightning strikes kill more people in the United States every year than measles does. Probably -- though I don't know how to get the statistics for this -- than every disease that might be vaccinated against that people decline.
This is not the threat that we need to compromise our principles over.
But then it will be too late, because everyone supported censoring ideas they simply didn't like being spread.
Then it will be against the law to object to anything that is official censored.
If the anti-vaxxers don't feel that they have a good platform to raise money, they are welcome and encouraged to make their own.
But do you really believe this is the only thing they will censor?
This is a canary dying, it's indicative of the problems that are coming, and it's going to be more and more censorship, until finally you object to something for real.
But because you didn't defend other's speech, there will be nothing left to do.
This is how free societies work. Everyone has the freedom to assemble--and not assemble--with whomever they choose.
We have protected classes for lines one cannot draw. But an essential part of democracy, going back to the Athenians, is the public's freedom to associate--and transact--with people of their choosing, and being able to associate--or not associate--on the basis of political views.
Other businesses censored their products but because it was something the masses didn't want censored, that business was mercilessly attacked.
There are no rules. That’s freedom of assembly.
GoFundMe is free not to do business with anti-vaxxers. You are free not to do business with them for that decision. Everyone decides what matters to them and acts on it to their own accordance. When there is consensus, it cascades and may even prompt the creation of a new protected class.
There are lots of them.
>...it cascades and may even prompt the creation of a new protected class.
Eventually there will be a protected class that you absolutely object to. And then it will be too late to alter the way they are created.
People forming an informal consensus, organizing and getting a bill passed is fundamental to the democratic legislative process.
Anti-vaxxers kill people by reducing herd immunity. I think that's wrong, I wouldn't platform that.
To have the Orwellian nightmare that you're describing, you'd really have to have a governing body performing this, and to have them disallowing you from building your own.
Now, if the credit card processors were blocking anti-vax stuff, I think you'd have a point, but as it stands it seems like you're just falling into a slippery slope that doesn't exist.
The fact that companies don't want that label is evidence that vaccine safety is not being discussed rationally, but with a mob mentality.
This is how I think we end up with 1984, through mobs and irrationality, not thoughtful discussion.
Debating against people with absurd, unproven, and dangerous claims does nothing to help the legitimate sciences, but works depressingly well at lending credibility to the erroneous claims.
If I were to make the claim that "all kale is radioactive" and that "there's a strong link between eating kale and growing tentacles out of your brain" without providing any evidence of this in the academic literature, you almost certainly wouldn't "debate" me on this, and you'd probably make similar points to the ones I'm making. I'd then fire back with "if you even _question_ the radio-kale theory you are a complete nutter". I might even exclaim "see, they won't even debate me on the kale question! They're trying to censor me! ORWELL!!!"
And this will not end well for people, because the government doesn't have to censor any more that loophole has been by-passed.
The problem is when corporations convince the populace to agree to censor information that is damaging to their profits, and we buy it.