Anti-vaxxers evaded social-media content bans by replacing the word ‘vaccine’ with a carrot emoji, BBC investigation finds

Anti-vaxxers evaded social-media content bans by replacing the word ‘vaccine’ with a carrot emoji, BBC investigation finds

Groups sharing baseless claims that people are being hurt or killed by vaccines are avoiding social-media bans on anti-vaxx content by using the carrot emoji, . Per the BBC, several social media groups were using the emoji as a code for the word "vaccine." The simple ruse allowed them to continue unhindered posting content that the networks had pledged to stamp out. One Facebook group using the code, which the BBC did not name, had over 250,000 members. The rules of the group stated: "Use code words for everything" and "Do not use the c word, v word or b word ever" meaning "COVID," "vaccine," or "booster," per the BBC. The trend was also noticed by Marc Owen Jones, an Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University, Qatar, who studies disinformation. The BBC said Jones was invited to the large Facebook group. the carrot emoji symbol was used to replace the word vaccine "presumably to evade censorship. Very odd." According to a screen grab , the admin of the group stated that they would remove any posts not coded and that "coding is important and carrots are to date not picked up by AI censors." Another