FACEBOOK EXPANDS ITS CRACKDOWN ON ANTI-VACCINE CONTENT

Tue 09 February 2021:

Facebook announced Monday that the company would take action against users and groups on Facebook and Instagram that spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine or vaccines in general.

The company is acting on advice from the World Health Organization and other groups to expand its list of false claims that are harmful.

“We will begin enforcing this policy immediately,” the company said on a blog post, “Groups, pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram that repeatedly share these debunked claims may be removed altogether.”

Facebook will ask administrators of user groups to moderate such misinformation. Facebook-owned Instagram will also make it harder to find accounts that discourage vaccination, and remove them if they continuously violate the rules.

Facebook already has banned advertisements that spread misinformation about vaccines.

In December, the company announced that on the advice of its oversight board, posts that spread misinformation about COVID-19 would be labeled as inaccurate, with links to correct information.

The new policy was developed in consultation with the World Health Organization expanding a list of debunked claims to include those that COVID-19 was man-made in a lab; that vaccines are not effective, toxic, dangerous or cause autism; or that “it’s safer to get the disease than to get the vaccination.”

The company this week will also include in its Covid-19 information center details from local health departments about when and where people can get vaccinated.

If Facebook’s systems come across content that says the coronavirus is man-made or manufactured, that it is safer to get the disease than to get the vaccine, or that the shots are toxic, dangerous or cause autism, that content will be removed.

Waves of online disinformation about COVID-19 were traced to Russia and China last year.

Plenty of anti-vaccine groups have been active since before the pandemic. An October 2020 article in The Lancet showed that 31 million people followed anti-vaccine pages on Facebook in 2019, with the number of followers growing by more than 7 million in one year.

Facebook is working to undo years of momentum gained by the anti-vaccination movement on its platforms, where emotional anecdotes and stories that provoke fear tend to spread more quickly than scientific facts.