Pregnancy App Censoring COVID Vaccine Discussions

A popular pregnancy app is censoring “vaccine misinformation,” according to The Washington Post.

In the past, pregnancy apps were criticized for permitting content questioning the necessity and efficacy of childhood vaccines. The content was mostly shared on social media platforms to allow for exchange between expecting mothers. After the COVID vaccine was released and the updated CDC guidelines were published, the situation changed.

“I searched in the group discussions for vaccines, and it popped up — some moms having discussions about not vaccinating your children, or getting delayed vaccines,” Mayshaya Engel, who gave birth to a daughter in August, said, referring to discussions skeptical of general vaccine. 

One pregnancy app has said that it would remove any content which questions or critiques the COVID-19 vaccination. There will not be any further discussions.

What to Expect’s “Pregnancy & Baby Tracker,” a pregnancy app that has 2 million users a month, began banning “conspiracy theorists” last month.

“By late November, a review of its forums turned up far fewer posts casting doubt on vaccines’ safety and more signs of posts and threads that had been taken down,” The Post reported.

“It changed,” Engel said. Engel added that expectant mothers were being encouraged to get vaccines more often. “It was like [the app was] kind of, like, more ‘for it’ — for pregnant moms getting vaccinated.”

The app “gradually redefined how we moderate posts about vaccines,” Christine Mattheis, the platform’s vice president and editorial director, wrote in an email to The Post, as “vaccine misinformation has increased in our community during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

One future mom said she felt the anti-COVID vaccination discussions originally taking place within the app were forced, and seemed to be glad that the platform had taken steps to root out “misinformation.”

“What really pissed me off and alarmed me was people trading advice on how to get around vaccine mandates” she said. She gave a specific example: “Somebody who was pregnant but had other children was asking other moms for advice on how to forge vaccine documents for their kid’s school.”

Mattheis stated that the platform changed its policy after the CDC advised pregnant women to get the COVID vaccination.

“We drew the hardest line when the CDC began explicitly recommending that pregnant people get vaccinated, and released a lot of data showing that not getting vaccinated is far more dangerous than the shot itself,” she said.