Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey promotes fitness 'entrepreneur' who claims vaccines cause autism

Social media firm claims boss had no idea about Ben Greenfield's dangerous beliefs

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on 5 September, 2018 in Washington, DC (Getty)

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey has appeared on a podcast with a controversial fitness personality who has promoted scientifically disproven claims that vaccinations cause autism.

Host Ben Greenfield – who tweeted in February that “vaccines do indeed cause autism” – thanked Mr Dorsey for an “epic podcast”.

The Twitter boss responded: “Great conversation and appreciate all you do to simplify the mountains of research focused on increasing one’s healthspan! Grateful for you.”

His appearance comes as other tech firms like Facebook and Pinterest are cracking down on anti-vaccine content on their platforms. However, Twitter claimed Mr Dorsey was unaware of the host’s controversial opinions.

A Twitter spokesperson told The Independent that Mr Dorsey did not know about Mr Greenfield’s views on vaccinations and that his podcast appearance was not an endorsement of those beliefs.

The spokesperson pointed to Twitter’s advertising policy, which addresses the promotion of controversial health content. Adverts regarding vaccination could potentially fall under any number of policies, including one that says any claims about a cure, treatment, diagnosis or prevention of certain diseases are restricted.

On Wednesday, Mr Greenfield posted a further vaccine-related tweet repeating unsubstantiated claims that inoculations could be harmful.

He said: “I am not against vaccinations. They have saved many lives. I was vaccinated. My children were vaccinated. But I also think we need to respectfully pay attention to potential adverse health effects. I rarely visit the topic, and had no idea until I did how charged this issue was.”

In his Twitter bio, Mr Greenfield writes: "Athlete, father, entrepreneur. Write & speak on health, longevity, fitness and nutrition". He has more than 70,000 followers.

Twitter and Facebook have been repeatedly accused of providing a platform for anti-vaccine propaganda to spread, as well as other disinformation.

Disinformation campaigns stemming from the anti-vax movement have become so severe that diseases like measles are making a comeback in countries where it had been almost eliminated.

In the US, health officials declared a public health emergency in Washington state following an outbreak of the disease.

“The reasons for this rise are complex, and not all of these cases are due to vaccine hesitancy,” the World Health Organisation said in January, while labelling the anti-vaccine movement one of the worst health threats facing humanity in 2019.

Facebook has since taken steps to prevent anti-vaccine content from appearing on its social network by reducing the ranking of groups and pages that spread misinformation.

“If these vaccine hoaxes appear on Facebook, we will take action against them,” the company’s head of global policy Monika Bickert wrote in a blog post earlier this month.

“We are exploring ways to give people more accurate information from expert organisations about vaccines at the top of results for related searches, on pages discussing the topic, and on invitations to join groups about the topic.”