- Facebook will take aggressive action against misinformation posts.
- Facebook blocked several adverts that supported anti-vaccination.
- The company claims to delete posts that may lead to physical harm.
Recently, Facebook has been under heavy fire due to voter manipulation, fake news propagation, and misleading users. A few years back it received severe backlash for its part in the 2016 Presidential Election Campaign scandal. Recently the social media giant announced its policies against fake news and misinformation on its platform.
Facebook’s Stance
Facebook is now taking a more aggressive stance to punish those who share misinformation or make fake posts on social media platforms. In the latest move, Facebook will begin removing false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. The social media site is constantly witnessing posts encouraging against vaccination. These anti-vaccination posts and all other related content, disproved by public health experts, will be removed.
The move comes ahead of the UK’s preparation to roll out the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines. In order to counter the anti-vaccination rhetoric, Facebook needs to take some strong action. The new regulations set by Facebook dictate that false claims and content about COVID-19 vaccines will be removed from both Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook’s spokesperson says that as the vaccines will begin rolling out, the social media site will also start removing any false claims related to these vaccines. However, only those facts that have been debunked by health experts will be taken down. It is to ensure that misinformation is removed which could lead to imminent physical harm to the general public.
Nature of policies
These policies are substantially stricter than typical rules on Facebook. Usually, the platform flags the misinformation posts and suppress them using curating algorithms. But, Facebook and Instagram did not remove these posts entirely. Facebook has seen the rise of the anti-vaccination rhetoric since 2018. It is surprising that such content spread over the platform totally unchecked.
Facebook has introduced its policy of misinformation removal way back but has used it rarely. It claims that only the misinformation that could lead to physical harm can be removed. Over the years, Facebook has been more vigilant against fake news posts. It even began suppressing groups and pages that spread anti-vaccination misinformation. Instagram took similar actions to reduce the spread of ‘vaccine hoaxes.’ Last month, Facebook banned all the adverts supporting the anti-vaccination stand. Now, adverts with a political viewpoint will be able to oppose vaccination.
