This has been my observation as well. The danger is in increasing the extremist rhetoric in an attempt to outdo competing anti-establishment "gurus"/anti-vax influencers in their fight to attract and retain paying followers.
While that's galling to see, it's targeted to convince the anti-vaxxer, or really the person who's on the fence. If they just dismiss the ideas, the anti-vaxxer says, "Oh look, the mainstream media covering up the truth again. Must be paid off by ${EVIL_BILLIONAIRE}." If he's given a chance, debates, and loses, that's a much better impression.
Not necessarily, this is the result of many things combined. Social media made it super easy to spread lies and misinformation. You could have a broken education before, but without the means to distribute your lies, your impact on society was small. Also Hollywood celebrities are the biggest contributors to anti-vaccination sentiment.
We almost don't have these anti-vaxer folks here, but it seems to me that people who spread hate towards them are incomparably more worse. It's like a hate cult. People buy whatever the media sell them and start to harass any group they were told to hate and fear, actually giving these groups growth.
Antivaxxers tend to do their proselyting for free. What this may discourage is that professional trolls meddle with it because they promote any "oppressed" outlandish claim to optimize for clicks (and therefore ad revenue).
See: far right/left, and other unusual controversial topics.
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