PALO ALTO, Calif.: Facebook Inc on Thursday said it would remove false claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts, following a similar announcement by Alphabet Inc’s YouTube in October.
The move expands Facebook’s current rules against falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic. The social media company says it takes down coronavirus misinformation that poses a risk of “imminent” harm, while labeling and reducing distribution of other false claims that fail to reach that threshold.
Facebook said in a blog post that the global policy change came in response to news that COVID-19
Two drug companies, Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc, have asked U.S. authorities for emergency use authorization of their vaccine candidates. Britain approved the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday, jumping ahead of the rest of the world in the race to begin the most crucial mass inoculation program in history.
Misinformation about the new coronavirus
A November report https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/under-the-surface-covid-19-vaccine-narratives-misinformation-and-data-deficits-on-social-media by the nonprofit First Draft found that 84 percent of interactions generated by vaccine-related conspiracy content it studied came from Facebook pages and Facebook-owned Instagram.
Facebook said it would remove debunked COVID-19
“This could include false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccines. For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19
Facebook did not specify when it would begin enforcing the updated policy, but acknowledged it would “not be able to start enforcing these policies overnight.”
The social media company has rarely removed misinformation about other vaccines under its policy of deleting content that risks imminent harm. It previously removed vaccine misinformation in Samoa where a measles outbreak killed dozens late last year, and it removed false claims about a polio vaccine drive in Pakistan that were leading to violence against health workers.
Facebook, which has taken steps to surface authoritative information about vaccines, said in October that it would also ban ads that discourage people from getting vaccines. In recent weeks, Facebook removed a prominent anti-vaccine page and a large private group – one for repeatedly breaking COVID misinformation rules and the other for promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.