{"id":10544,"date":"2026-11-06T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=10544"},"modified":"2026-11-06T19:28:35","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T00:28:35","slug":"measles-mumps-and-misinformation-how-crunchy-moms-became-the-most-dangerous-group-on-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/measles-mumps-and-misinformation-how-crunchy-moms-became-the-most-dangerous-group-on-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Measles, mumps and misinformation: how Crunchy Moms became \u2018the most dangerous\u2019 group on Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a measles outbreak spread through Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in August, a parent turned to a massive public <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/facebook\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> group, Crunchy Moms, for advice. The parent was considering getting their three-year-old vaccinated, in part to protect their six-month-old.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m nervous for my baby,\u201d the parent wrote.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst of all your children cannot die of measles. It is literally impossible,\u201d one member responded. \u201cDo not do it,\u201d advised another. Others said the vaccine would spread measles or that it would be like \u201cinjecting poison\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the post, Facebook\u2019s AI system \u2013 run by its parent company, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/meta\" target=\"_blank\">Meta<\/a> \u2013 summarized the 589&nbsp;responses, writing in part that commenters \u201cclaim the vaccine is unnecessary or even harmful\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>None of those claims are true. Pennsylvania has reported six <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pa.gov\/agencies\/health\/diseases-conditions\/infectious-disease\/measles\" target=\"_blank\">measles-associated deaths<\/a> this year, including two babies in Lancaster county. The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and effective. Health officials say it is the best defense against measles spreading and injuring or killing people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a measles outbreak spread through Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in August, a parent turned to a massive public <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/facebook\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> group, Crunchy Moms, for advice. The parent was considering getting their three-year-old vaccinated, in part to protect their six-month-old.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m nervous for my baby,\u201d the parent wrote.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst of all your children cannot die of measles. It is literally impossible,\u201d one member responded. \u201cDo not do it,\u201d advised another. Others said the vaccine would spread measles or that it would be like \u201cinjecting poison\u201d.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/measles-mumps-and-misinformation-how-crunchy-moms-became-the-most-dangerous-group-on-facebook\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Measles, mumps and misinformation: how Crunchy Moms became \u2018the most dangerous\u2019 group on Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[375,81,26,35,1430,388,978,304,958,309,470,51,15,1318],"class_list":["post-10544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-anti-vaccine-movement","tag-anti-vaxxers","tag-children","tag-disinformation","tag-facebook","tag-measles","tag-meta","tag-outbreaks","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pro-virus-policies","tag-social-media","tag-united-states","tag-vaccines","tag-war-on-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10544"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10546,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10544\/revisions\/10546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}