In mid-January the news leapt to social networks and from there to mass media of all fur: the last challenge strongly viralized on the internet was to ingest liquid detergent capsules. Far from other more or less harmless challenges such as the "Ice Bucket Challenge" or the entertaining "Water Bottle Flip Challenge", this "Tide Pod Challenge" is a real danger. You may even overcome the crazy challenge of burning your skin with ice and salt.
After the increasing viralization of these videos and the health alarm unleashed by the serious health problems that the intake of these concentrated products can cause, YouTube decided to take action on the matter and began to eliminate the marked videos leaving open the possibility of closing channels .
On YouTube you can see other videos equal or more dangerous than those of the detergent challenge, but Google does not apply the same measures
Containers of detergent capsules mostly ingested in videos whose commercial name has given the name to the challenge.
The accounts that uploaded them, according to YouTube sources confirmed, received one of the famous strikes of the Google platform; although videos that dealt with the challenge in an informative, documentary or educational way were excluded from this consequence. Adding three strikes, a channel can be closed temporarily or permanently.
The reason for these strong measures? On the one hand, the dimension of the challenge especialemnte in the United States, with 39 reports of voluntary intakes of detergent counted only in the first half of January by the American Association of Poison Control Centers. And, on the other, the breach of the service's policies.
The YouTube community standards prohibit content that is intended to encourage dangerous activities that carry an inherent risk of physical harm. We work to quickly remove marked videos that violate our policies.
A justification that would perfectly match the restrictions regarding the content defined as harmful and dangerous, the one that "encourages other people to take actions that may cause serious injuries", but for other equally or more harmful videos continue on YouTube despite the fact that they report or suppose, objectively, a potential risk to health.
The situation of videos against vaccines and treatments for cancer
Without fear of making mistakes, we can say with total certainty that vaccines are one of the greatest advances of humanity in its fight against diseases. Similarly, chemotherapy is one of the fundamental therapeutic modalities and more used to destroy the cells that make up the tumors and reduce the cancer's condition.
However, just as there are defenders of the flatness of the Earth, there are people who reject in an irrational way vaccines and treatments against one of the greatest health challenges. Although unlike the former, their beliefs about diseases can become a danger to public health and the welfare of those who follow them.
One of the videos uploaded to YouTube that say that what kills is chemotherapy and not cancer
In the case of vaccines, for example, the World Health Organization estimates that thanks to them, between two and three million deaths are avoided each year due to diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough or measles. In the case of this last condition, global mortality was reduced by 74% in 2010, while the incidence of polio also decreased, by 99%, until it was testimonial.
Chemotherapy, on the other hand, is one of the three great advances in the fight against cancer along with targeted therapies and immunotherapy. Tumors that were once less than a death sentence, thanks to this treatment have ceased to be and survival has increased.
This small sample of data serves to show how dangerous the propagation of radically wrong ideas can be, which, far from being an opinion, are pure and hard misinformation or completely ignorant.
Video in which it is assured that the vaccines are a hoax and that the alleged side effects are hidden by outlining conspiracy theories
"According to statistics, [...] chemotherapy is an ineffective method when it comes to curing cancer," says one of the many videos we found on YouTube stating that this cancer treatment is what really kills. "The vaccines were created to create immunity to certain diseases, however, contraindications and side effects are hidden because they generate millions of dollars in profits and perhaps also have a hidden purpose to make the population more manageable. or reduce it slowly ", explains another video about immunization.
These are affirmations that can go far beyond simple conditioning. Whoever considers or takes as certain fallacies of this kind, disguised as information or opinion, could face serious health problems. It could end up putting your life and that of relatives influenced by your decisions, as well as compromising public health.
The anti-vaccine movement has already caused, for example, that vaccination rates in rich schools in Los Angeles, California, be as low as those in South Sudan, triggering the incidence of diseases such as whooping cough. The dissemination of pseudotherapies against cancer and the discrediting of treatments with scientific evidence such as chemotherapy have led to cases as dramatic as the 21-year-old Valencian who died of "scientific ignorance" being carried away by a healer who interfered in the procedure doctor, according to his father.
Even reporting these videos, Google keeps them on YouTube by understanding them indirectly as not dangerous or harmful
Since Xataka have contacted Google officials to know why they have acted against videos that may encourage the consumption of detergent capsules and not act against videos that spread serious health falsehoods about vaccines or treatments against cancer disease. The response has been an invitation to review what their policies indicate about harmful or dangerous content.
Although it might seem an injustice to say that we can not show content because, theoretically, it could negatively affect some users, we do not accept any content that has the purpose of promoting violence or encouraging the realization of illegal or dangerous activities that entail a risk of death or serious physical injuries.
Videos that we believe promote illegal or dangerous activities include those that teach how to make bombs, play choking games, use hard drugs or other acts that can cause serious injuries.
Could a video on these subjects remain on the platform under certain circumstances? Yes, and the criteria are these: "if your main objective is educational, documentary, scientific or artistic (EDSA) and it is not graphic for free". In the case of the detergent challenge, if it is a recording that relates the issue and warns about its dangers, it could remain. On the other hand, if a video is more than one person ingesting these capsules, their destination will most likely be elimination. However, the same does not happen with other recordings that could also be considered harmful, at least potentially.
That is why we have gone a little further by carrying out a test from six videos framed in three potentially dangerous or harmful themes. Videos that could "encourage the performance of dangerous [...] activities that entail a risk of death or serious physical injuries," as the video platform states in its standards. They are two videos anti-vaccines, one of them the referenced above; two videos that discredit essential medical treatments, one is the one that charges against chemotherapy and the other defends the cure of HIV and lupus with homeopathy; and, finally, two of explicit violence among minors. There are six, but could have been more given that we found dozens of recordings of a similar nature.
One of the videos we report to YouTube
With three of those videos we went directly to Google through the company's spokesperson; the other three videos are reported through the YouTube reporting system. And in both cases exactly the same thing happened: while the two videos that showed violent content, specifically juvenile violence, were deleted, the other four deceptive videos about vaccines, chemotherapy or the false and extraordinary powers of homeopathy continued and continue online days after.
It is difficult to be positioned only on certain issues
For what reasons or criteria determined videos such as anti-vaccines or antiquimio and pseudotherapies against cancer, so serious, are tolerated? ", We asked the Mountain View." The line between what we remove and what we leave is if the content it has educational, documentary, scientific, artistic or comment purposes. "With this response we should understand that videos that state that vaccines are a" big deception ", that" lupus and HIV do heal with homeopathy "or that "chemotherapy is what kills, not cancer" are framed within those exempted categories of elimination.
Google, positioning itself as an editor when it comes to withdrawing some topics and not others, is in a position of difficult coherence.