Twitter has a new tool to combat anti-vaccine misinformation

Vaccines work, and Twitter wants you to know it.

Amid growing misinformation surrounding vaccines, Twitter has rolled out a tool that combats falsities with reliable information, it announced Friday. The tool drops a link to vaccines.gov at the top of U.S. searches for tweets related to vaccines, and links out to appropriate government information for Canada, Japan, Brazil, and several other countries.

In the past few months, the U.S. has seen the number of measles outbreaks skyrocket, putting it on track for the highest annual number of measles cases since the disease was declared "eliminated" in 2000. That's partially been furthered by people who choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children, and who often chalk their decisions up to false associations between vaccines and autism. Conspiracy theorists and even the president have spread this misinformation, and it has proliferated widely on social media as well.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

That's why Twitter on Friday quietly unveiled its small addition to its search function, which puts reliable information on top of anything questionable. Twitter also said it won't "auto-suggest queries that are likely to direct individuals to non-credible commentary and information about vaccines" in its blog post. It already works to ensure advertisements don't "contain misleading claims about the cure, treatment, diagnosis, or prevention of certain diseases and conditions," the post continues.

The move is similar to how Twitter offers resources when someone searches for tweets related to suicide or self-harm. It also has a reporting feature so users can notify a team that reviews mentions of self-harm or suicide on the site.