A father who lost his son was harassed online by anti-vaxxers

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A father who lost his son was harassed online by anti-vaxxers
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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.'

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.. 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.

"It felt like you were talking to a wall," Ball told Insider, regarding his experience reporting comments that flooded his social media accounts. Ball enlisted his close friends to help manage his social media pages and report the comments while he focused on his son's funeral. Mostly, the platforms didn't respond to the reports. There were a few cases where Twitter accounts were banned. Ball said that he doesn't know what kind of comments may have gotten users booted off the platform because, in those instances, his friends reported the posts.

Ball reported the comment and, on March 2, received a message from Facebook support that told him that the comment did not violate"Community Standards."Ball was surprised that Facebook appeared to tolerate harassment on its platform. Although he didn't expect a ban, the father hoped that there would be some kind of penalization on the user, either by temporarily locking the account or at the very least letting the user know that the behavior is not tolerated on the platform.

how online conspiracy theorists have clung to"Died suddenly" posts to push a claim that a child, celebrity, or athlete died unexpectedly because of the COVID-19 shot.. The child died unexpectedly but had prior health problems.

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