Following years of damaging, baseless health claims thriving on its platform, Facebook has barred misinformation about all vaccines.
The company announced in a blogpost on Monday, that as part of its policy on Covid-19 related misinformation, Facebook will take out any posts with deceitful claims about the vaccines. These new community guidelines apply to user-generated posts as well as paid advertisements, which were already banned from including such misinformation. Instagram users will face the same restrictions.
“We will begin enforcing this policy immediately, with a particular focus on Pages, groups and accounts that violate these rules,” said Guy Rosen, who oversees content decisions. “We’ll continue to expand our enforcement over the coming weeks.”
Facebook has repeatedly updated its policies on Covid-19 content as the pandemic has evolved. Groups on Facebook have been known to create private rooms of misinformation and have fueled the rise of anti-vaccine communities and expressions. As per the new policy, groups who are found to be frequently sharing banned content will be shut down. Facebook constantly updates its policies on the material on Covid-19 as the pandemic has advanced. In April 2020, it began to add posts about the virus and facts from the CDC to combat misinformation. It often made misinformation about vaccines less visible on its platform but stopped short of removing it.
This methodology changed in December 2020. The company strengthened its coronavirus policy and started to remove any Covid-19 related post that had been discredited by the public health experts. This included posts suggesting vaccines contain microchips, claims that wearing a face mask does not help prevent the spread of Covid-19, and claims that 5G technology contributes to or causes coronavirus infections. FB is now set to open up this ban, and address false claims about Covid-19 being synthetic, the vaccines are non-effective and does not prevent you from getting the virus and that it is a lot safer to get the virus rather than get the vaccine.
FB’s band does not only adhere to Covid-19 related content but will also focus on fabrications including suggesting that the vaccine causes autism, an unsupported claim made by communities against having the vaccine. Despite the new policy, vaccine misinformation remains on Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook owns. Top search results for “Covid vaccine” on Instagram were still turning up conspiracy theory accounts on Monday morning.
Regardless of FBs policy, misinformation on the vaccines continue to stay on FB and Instagram, which is owned by Face Book. As of Monday morning, “Covid Vaccine” was popping up as conspiracy theory accounts.
FB has been in the line of fire for the way they handled the Covid-19 misinformation. In December 2020, a video of a plot of a prominent conspiracy theory went viral on FB’s platform and FB was not successful and failed to remove the pages of a well-known anti- vaccine activist who persisted by creating new accounts after he was banned
