Anti-vax group in Europe thrives online, thwarts tech effort

Troubled by the number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients showing up at his hospital, the French doctor logged on to Facebook and uploaded a video urging people to get vaccinated.

He was soon swarmed by dozens, then hundreds, then more than 1,000 hateful messages from an anti-vaccine extremist group known as V_V. The group, active in France and Italy, has harassed doctors and public health officials, vandalized government offices and tried to disrupt vaccine clinics.

Alarmed by the abuse of its platform, Facebook kicked off several accounts tied to the group last December. But it didn’t stop V_V, which continues to use Facebook and other platforms and, like many anti-vaccine groups around the world, has expanded its portfolio to include climate change denialism and anti-democratic messaging.

“Let’s go and get them at home, they don’t have to sleep anymore,” reads one post from the group. “Fight with us!” reads another.

The largely unchecked nature of the attacks on the indisputable health benefits of the vaccine highlight the clear limits of a social media company to thwart even the most destructive kind of disinformation, particularly without a sustained aggressive effort.

Researchers at Reset, a U.K.-based nonprofit, identified more than 15,000 abusive or misinformation-laden Facebook posts from V_V — activity that peaked in spring 2022, months after the platform announced its actions against the organization. In a report on V_V’s activities, Reset’s researchers concluded that its continued presence on Facebook raises “questions about the effectiveness and consistency of Meta’s self-reported intervention.”

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, noted in response that its 2021 actions were never meant to eliminate all V_V content, but to take down accounts found to be...