A sign at the entrance to the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, California. Photo / Laura Morton, The New York Times
Facebook on Thursday (US time) said it would remove posts that contain claims about Covid-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts, as the social network acts more aggressively to bat down coronavirus misinformation while falsehoods run rampant.
The move goes a step beyond how Facebook had handled
misinformation about other kinds of vaccines. The company had previously made it more difficult to find vaccine misinformation that was not related to the coronavirus by "downranking" it, essentially making it less visible in people's news feeds.
But Facebook said it planned to take down Covid-19 vaccine falsehoods entirely if the claims had been discredited or contradicted by health groups including the World Health Organisation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"This is another way that we are applying our policy to remove misinformation about the virus that could lead to imminent physical harm," the company said in a blog post. "This could include false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccines."
Facebook added that it would also take down "false claims that Covid-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn't on the official vaccine ingredient list."
