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A prominent anti-vaccine activist, Joseph Mercola, yesterday lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels.

Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, US magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users’ content,'" Beeler wrote.

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Online advertising on social platforms is changing. Google and Meta no longer hold majority control over advertising dollars, according to The Wall Street Journal , with Amazon and TikTok cutting in to sway advertisers to other platforms. Twitter is also hungry to redirect ad dollars to its platform, as it announced yesterday that it would be “relaxing” its political ads policy and allowing more “cause-based” ads. The company is also planning to expand to allow other forms of political advertising “in the coming weeks.”

Promising to share more details soon, the @TwitterSafety account tweeted Tuesday that from now on, Twitter’s goal is to align its advertising policy “with that of TV and other media outlets.” It’s unclear what exactly that means on a platform like Twitter, but the Federal Communications Commission specifies that it works to restrict censorship and ensure equal opportunity for political advertisers. This aligns somewhat with Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s stated "free speech absolutist" position. Twitter could also be looking to emulate the FCC to diminish the company's responsibility to review or ensure the accuracy of all political ad content.

Twitter’s recent policy change reverses a decision the platform made in 2019 to ban political ads to limit misinformation spread. That 2019 ban included exceptions for some cause-based advertising, where advertisers were permitted to conduct some microtargeting of Twitter users based on limited geographic location information, keywords, and interests. Notably, advertisers were not allowed to target audiences based on political affiliation like “conservative” or “liberal.” Under these prior rules, Twitter-certified cause-based advertisers approved to promote content created to “educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity.”

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Pizza slices, cupcakes, and carrots are just a few emojis that anti-vaccine activists use to speak in code and continue spreading COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook.

Bloomberg reported that Facebook moderators have failed to remove posts shared in anti-vaccine groups and on pages that would ordinarily be considered violating content, if not for the code-speak. One group that Bloomberg reviewed, called “Died Suddenly,” is a meeting ground for anti-vaccine activists supposedly mourning a loved one who died after they got vaccines—which they refer to as having “eaten the cake.”

Facebook owner Meta told Bloomberg that “it’s removed more than 27 million pieces of content for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy, an ongoing process,” but declined to tell Ars whether posts relying on emojis and code-speak were considered in violation of the policy.