By Annie Palmer For Dailymail.com
Published: 23:38 BST, 9 May 2019 | Updated: 23:38 BST, 9 May 2019
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Instagram has struggled to beat back content promoting vaccination conspiracy theories, so it's taking new steps to prevent misinformation around this topic from spreading further.
The company will now begin to block hashtags that show consistently false information about vaccines, such as #vaccinescauseautism, #vaccinescauseaids and #vaccinesarepoison.
Once a hashtag has been blocked, if a user attempts to search that term, it will no longer return any results when users click on it.
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Instagram will now begin to block hashtags that show a certain amount of vaccine misinformation, such as #vaccinescauseautism, #vaccinescauseaids and #vaccinesarepoison
Instagram has widened the scope of blocked anti-vaccination hashtags after CNN found that hashtags such as #VaccinesKill were being used to spread misinformation, despite the company's announcement that it would no longer allow hashtags like #vaccinescauseAIDS.
The crackdown will effect hashtags that contain a high amount of known vaccine misinformation, Instagram said.
Instagram declined to say what threshold a hashtag needs to reach before it is a candidate for removal, as it doesn't want users to be able to game the system.
Known vaccine misinformation refers to vaccine hoaxes that have been identified by groups including the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These groups have publicly stated that vaccines don't cause autism, so