A PRO-INDEPENDENCE Facebook page set up 10 years ago to promote news and information about the Yes movement has come under fire for promoting Covid conspiracies and anti-lockdown content.
The major community page, named YES to an Independent Scotland, is liked by nearly 85,000 people and followed by around 80,000.
It has been active since 2011 and calls on Facebook users to join for “regular updates and news regarding the liberation movement in Scotland”.
However throughout the pandemic the page has caused controversy for posts declaring the Covid-19 crisis to be a “scam” and telling users not to follow public health rules.
READ MORE: Covid in Scotland: More than 1000 new coronavirus cases recorded on June 16
Independence supporters who have followed the page for years expressed disappointment over its direction as Covid-denying content became more frequent, with the number of people liking it dropping in recent days.
One post this morning claimed Covid-19 restrictions are “illegal”, encouraged followers to ignore them in order to achieve normality and claimed healthy people are being given "unreliable 'tests' to feed the narrative".
The post was later deleted after backlash, with the account holder writing that until “media brainwashing stops, and the tin-foil hats come off along with the face nappies, [the] selfish dystopian mysophobia is going to continue to be a problem”.
In other posts this month the Facebook page questioned whether the lockdown “was ever about overwhelming the NHS”, shared a campaign telling people to stop wearing masks and described reports of a third wave of Covid-19 as “fictional”.
READ MORE: Covid in Scotland: Four deaths caused by adverse effects of vaccine, NRS finds
Pro-independence followers of the group accused the account holder of “splitting” the Yes movement and potentially “damaging” the cause.
“When did this page last post anything other than dogmatic anti-lockdown crap?” asked another user.
Several advised that they would be unfollowing the long-running page.
Facebook says it is working to remove false claims about Covid-19 from its website – including claims that deny the existence of the pandemic, or downplay the severity of the illness.
Throughout the crisis there have been major concerns about misinformation spreading on the platform. The UK Government has described the level of false claims about Covid on social media as a “tsunami”.
As Scotland and the UK overall see Covid-19 cases rise amid lockdown easing and the spread of the Delta variant, experts say it’s important to remain cautious and allow the vaccination scheme to do its job.
Philippa Whitford (above), the SNP’s health spokesperson at Westminster, criticised groups downplaying the need for restrictions at this stage in the pandemic.
“People talk about folk making personal decisions about risk, but whoever they might pass the virus onto doesn’t get to do that,” she said.
“This is what people need to realise. It’s not just ‘will I smoke or not, will I drink too much or not?’ It’s that you may pass it onto someone else who for whatever reason does get seriously ill. And not everyone is vaccinated as yet – we’re quite some way from being fully vaccinated.
“It’s all well and good for someone to say ‘well I’m okay, I’m happy to take the risk, I won’t get sick’. But you may pass it on to someone who will.”
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The MP for Central Ayrshire went on: “We are seeing, albeit from lowish numbers, we are seeing hospital admissions rise and in particular we are seeing a steady rise in intensive care cases – albeit in small numbers, but they are rising.”
And just because many people are fully vaccinated doesn’t mean it’s time to throw all caution to the wind, Whitford said. “Once you get a surge you become at risk of other variants. We’ve already got a variant that’s more infectious, makes people sicker and has some degree of vaccine escape. If you allowed that to just rip, then it doesn’t need that many more mutations to become significantly vaccine resistant.”
However Whitford stressed the vaccination scheme is “amazing” and there will be progress made over the summer.
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