AI Health Tools Raise Safety Concerns. Plus, Flu Vaccine Myths Spread During Record Season — The Monitor

Study Shows Team-Based Content Moderation Improves Consensus

A common challenge in content moderation of incorrect or harmful information is people do not agree on what is true. A December study from the Annenberg School for Communication found that content moderators working in teams reached higher levels of agreement on controversial content moderation decisions compared to working alone. The experiment involved over 600 politically diverse moderators and found that “structured social interaction” strengthened accuracy and agreement in content moderation decisions. The findings come as some major platforms have scaled back content moderation efforts to prioritize free speech and diverse thinking, with Meta ending its third-party fact-checking program in 2025 and X reducing its trust and safety teams. Even before these changes, a 2023 KFF poll found that most adults (69%) said social media companies were not doing enough to limit the spread of false and inaccurate health information.

Visa Restrictions Target Content Moderators and Fact-Checkers

A December directive from the State Department instructed immigration officers to deny H-1B visas to individuals who worked in fact-checking, content moderation, trust and safety, or other activities the administration considers censorship of Americans’ speech. In response, the International Fact-Checking Network issued a statement calling the policy a misunderstanding of fact-checking, arguing that the practice strengthens public debate rather than censoring it. Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, was among European figures barred from receiving a visa and has sued the Trump administration, claiming the denial is “punishment” for his organization’s work combatting misinformation.

Grok’s Explicit Images Highlight Legal Ambiguities in AI Liability

Reports indicate that X’s Grok chatbot is being used to create AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) of women and children, which can harm victims’ mental health through depression, anxiety, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. X has since announced that it would restrict Grok from generating explicit images of real people in jurisdictions where such content is illegal, but these reports have raised questions about who is liable when AI causes documented psychological harm. International regulators have warned of investigations and other actions, and lawmakers in the U.S. have expressed concern. Legal observers have characterized the AI-generated images as a testing ground for whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides legal immunity to online platforms for user-generated content, extends to harmful or illegal AI-generated content. Legal efforts to regulate AI have largely stalled in the U.S., but a bill signed into law last year criminalizes sharing NCII, including AI-generated images, and requires platforms to remove them.

What’s happening?

Misleading claims that flu vaccines are ineffective or weaken the immune system have circulated during the ongoing respiratory virus season, which has seen the highest flu levels in 25 years. The surge in cases is largely driven by a new mutation of the virus, called subclade K, that emerged after the season’s vaccine formulation was finalized in March. Each year, scientists predict what strains to include in the coming season’s flu vaccine, but subclade K only became the dominant strain after those decisions were made, creating a mismatch between the vaccine and the circulating virus.

Where confusion about flu vaccines is emerging

• The vaccine-strain mismatch may be contributing to claims that the vaccine is ineffective. Senator Rand Paul, for example, questioned the vaccine’s effectiveness on a podcast in mid-January, specifically citing the strain mismatch and suggesting that claims about crossover protection are “inflated.” While this season’s vaccine was not specifically designed to target subclade K, evidence from prior influenza seasons shows that flu vaccines can still provide some protection from infection when they are mismatched to the dominant circulating strain. Vaccination also helps to protect against severe outcomes, including hospitalization and death.
• Statements by health officials may also contribute to concern over the safety of the flu vaccine. For example, a video clip of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appearing on a podcast in 2020 has been shared widely online recently. In the clip, Kennedy says he would not take a flu shot “in a million years” and claims that the vaccine can make people susceptible to other infections. Other HHS officials have claimed that randomized controlled trials do not show that the flu vaccine protects against influenza, but fact-checkers note that flu vaccines are designed primarily to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death. Although clinical trials are typically too small to reliably measure these relatively rare outcomes, meta-analyses have demonstrated that flu vaccines reduce these risks.
• Others have claimed that the flu vaccine increases the risk of being infected with flu. While flu vaccines can cause some side effects that may resemble flu-like illness, they contain inactivated or attenuated versions of the virus that cannot cause flu infection, and vaccination is not associated with higher rates of other, non-influenza infections. Because flu vaccines do not fully protect against infection and multiple strains can circulate in the same season, vaccinated individuals can still become infected with influenza, but this does not mean the vaccine caused the infection.

Conflicting guidance may contribute to further confusion

• Guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in August 2025 recommended that everyone aged six months or older receive routine annual influenza immunization. However, as part of broader changes to federal vaccine policy, HHS issued a memo in January reducing the number of vaccines recommended for all children and moving six vaccines, including influenza, from routine recommendations to “shared clinical decision making,” a process where health care providers and parents decide individually whether vaccination is appropriate.
• Physician organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have criticized the changes and reaffirmed their support for routine childhood vaccinations, including flu vaccines. KFF polling has shown that larger shares of the public trust their own health care providers and physician associations like the AMA and AAP than the CDC for reliable vaccine information.

Why this matters

• The misleading narratives about flu vaccines and the shifting federal guidance come as flu vaccination rates have already declined from pre-pandemic levels to around 43% for both adults and children. Older adults, pregnant people, and people with underlying health conditions face the highest risk of severe illness, hospitalization, or death from influenza. While these groups typically have higher flu vaccination rates than the general public, the ongoing severe season and the vaccine-strain mismatch may create an environment that allows misleading claims about the flu vaccine to spread, potentially impacting vaccine uptake and hesitancy among these vulnerable groups.
• For children, the federal government’s decision to move pediatric flu vaccines to the shared clinical decision making category could introduce additional barriers to vaccine access and potentially result in lower vaccination rates. The move comes as smaller shares of parents view flu vaccination as important. The KFF/Washington Post Survey of Parents found that while about nine in ten parents view routine immunizations for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and polio as important for children in their community to get, a much smaller share (56%) said the same for the flu vaccine. Similarly, while at least eight in ten parents express confidence in the safety of MMR and polio vaccines for children, smaller shares (65%) say they are confident the flu vaccines are safe for children. HHS framed the decision as part of an effort to restore trust, but it remains unclear what effect the changes will have. KFF will continue to monitor how changing federal guidance impacts trust in vaccines and public health efforts.