A father whose 6-year-old son died was flooded with anti-vaxxer harassment. When...
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A father whose 6-year-old son died was flooded with anti-vaxxer harassment. When a commenter baselessly claimed he killed his son, Facebook said he could 'hide' the comment 'if he didn't like it.'
Billy Ball lost his 6-year-old son due to a rare medical condition in January.
Inexplicably, anti-vaxxers began to claim online that the death was due to the COVID vaccine.
Facebook and Twitter often took no action when the comments were reported, Ball said.
When Billy Ball lost his 6-year-old son in January after an accident brought on by a rare medical condition, Ball posted his son's obituary on Twitter and started a fundraiser in the child's name to raise money for an art program at his son's neighborhood school.
The responses, at first, were mostly kind. Many people donated, Ball wrote in The Atlantic. But the father's social media feeds soon devolved into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists baselessly claiming that Ball killed his son by getting him vaccinated for COVID-19. And Twitter and Facebook often offered little to no recourse, he said.
In one case, Facebook determined that a comment in which a user mocked and accused Ball of killing his son did not violate community guidelines and declined to remove the comment.
"While we've decided not to take this comment down, we understand that you don't like it," a message from Facebook support read. "We recommend that you hide the comment or unfollow, unfriend or block the person who posted it."
"It felt like you were talking to a wall," Ball told Insider, regarding his experience reporting comments that flooded his social media accounts.
In the past year, unexpected deaths or health complications have become a dog whistle for anti-vaxxers who believe or suggest the COVID-19 vaccine is the cause behind these medical episodes. The claims have even spawned a pseudo-documentary.
Meta and Twitter CEO Elon Musk did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Insider received an automated response from Twitter.
In the days since he shared the fundraiser online, Ball, who is a managing editor at Cardinal & Pine newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that he must have received thousands of comments on Twitter accusing him of being responsible for his son's death. Facebook was a little more manageable — around seven to eight posts a day, Ball estimates. Either way, the mourning father could not keep up with all the comments.
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