By James Simons-
Facebook is to ban posts containing misinformation about vaccines in the wake of people claiming it can cause autism.
The announcement comes as social media platforms step up to the challenge of taking responsibility for the posts shared on its site in recent times, particularly following Donald Trump’s ongoing unproven claims of election fraud.
These new community guidelines apply to user-generated posts as well as paid advertisements, 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.”
Some of the false claims Facebook say have been shared on the platform includes COVID-19 being man-made or manufactured; vaccines being effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against; the view that it is safer to get the disease than to get the vaccine, and that vaccines are toxic, dangerous or cause autism.
In light of this, Facebook issued a statement yesterday, February 8, explaining its plans on removing false claims, such as these, from the platform.
It read, ‘Today, we are expanding our efforts to remove false claims on Facebook and Instagram about COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines and vaccines in general during the pandemic. Since December, we’ve removed false claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts.’
Today, following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines.
Facebook added that these new policy will ‘help [them] continue to take aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines’ and that changes will be enforced immediately.
Facebook has repeatedly updated its policies on Covid-19 content as the pandemic has evolved. In April 2020, it began to add to posts about coronavirus a panel of facts from the CDC to combat misinformation. It often made misinformation about vaccines less visible on its platform but stopped short of removing it.
The social media giant strengthened its coronavirus policies and began to remove posts about Covid-19 that had been debunked by 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 infection.