Popular pro-vaccine Reddit page calls on founders to do more to combat COVID-19 disinformation

• A popular reddit page supporting vaccines is calling on the site to restrict COVID-19 disinformation.

A popular pro-vaccine reddit page, r/vaxxhappened, shared a post on Wednesday calling for the site's founders to do more to combat COVID-19 disinformation spreading on the site.

The page has over 330,000 subscribers and the moderators wrote that they, "collect the outrageous and dangerous tales told by dimwitted anti-vaxxers on all forms of media."

"We could have been better off months ago, but disinformation and lies have been allowed to spread readily through inaction and malice, and have dragged this on at the cost of lives," the page's moderators wrote. "There are those who deny that the pandemic even exists, there are those who think that wearing a mask will literally suffocate you, there are those who think it's no worse than a regular flu virus, that it's a bioweapon, and everything in between. This volume of blatant misinformation is problematic and dangerous."

"It is clear that even after promising to tackle the problem of misinformation on this site, nothing of substance has been done aside from quarantining a medium-sized subreddit, which barely reduces traffic and does little to stop misinformation," they added.

The founders have addressed COVID-19 misinformation on the platform and there is a volunteer-led effort to fight misniformation.

"Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. We provide users with authoritative resources when viewing communities that may warrant additional scrutiny, and continue to action content and users that violate our policies," a Reddit spokesperson told Insider.

"Throughout the pandemic, we have also provided COVID-related resources to support our volunteer moderators, users, and communities, including a dedicated AMA series connecting users with authoritative experts on coronavirus and vaccines, as well as deploying homepage banners directing users to the CDC and r/Coronavirus," they added.

Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook have struggled to combat COVID-19 misinformation on their platforms. Last month, The New York Times reported that Facebook data scientists requested resources to understand how far COVID-19 misinformation was reaching and were denied by higher-ups.