Facebook will expand measures to eliminate false information about COVID-19 vaccines. On the other hand, it will help users find reliable and current information about vaccines. And in some countries, it will even show when and how users can get vaccinated against COVID-19.
One of the measures announced by the Facebook team is that it will remove all content with false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. Following the same dynamic that Facebook has applied since the beginning of the pandemic, these measures are based on the advice of different organizations, for example, the WHO.
We are expanding the list of false claims that we will remove to include additional discredited claims about coronavirus and vaccines. This includes claims such as:
- COVID-19 is artificial or manufactured.
- Vaccines are not effective in preventing the disease they are meant to protect against.
- It is safer to get the disease than to receive the vaccine.
- Vaccines are toxic, dangerous, or cause autism.
This update in Facebook’s policies is already being implemented, so it will remove all content that does not fit the new criteria, whether on personal profiles, groups, or pages. And to complement this new measure, it will also direct users to trusted content when searching for COVID-19 related topics from the search engine.
Facebook again mentions that it is committed to helping organizations and public officials as vaccines reach more people. And to that end, the goal of its new initiative is to bring reliable information about vaccines to users to encourage them to get vaccinated as doses become available in different territories.
As part of this initiative, it is working together with different organizations to run vaccine campaigns on Facebook. In other words, it is making it easier for NGOs and government institutions to reach more users through the platform’s advertising tools.
And finally, Facebook also wants to help people with information on when and where to get vaccinated, through its Information Center. To do this, it will include links to local government platforms with all the information on eligibility and availability of vaccines.
Of course, this will depend on the guidelines of each country, so Facebook will only reflect the information provided by the local Ministry of Health through links to the official platforms. For the moment, this dynamic will begin to apply to the United States, but they plan to extend it to other countries.
