Facebook cracks down on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

Facebook announced today that it would delete unpaid posts with false vaccine information from its service.

The move follows the company’s October decision to eliminate COVID-19 misinformation from its advertising programs.

In December, the company went further, deleting posts with COVID-19 claims that government and health authorities had debunked.

But Facebook had allowed some misinformation to remain on the site, choosing in some cases to make it less visible rather than eliminate it.

Protestors who recently disrupted vaccination efforts at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles had communicated on the social media platform.
Vaccine opponents have long used Facebook as a sounding board.

The new policies also extend to Facebook-owned Instagram.

The social media giant has taken steps to combat vaccine misinformation in the past. After the measles outbreak in 2018 and 2019, the company decided to downrank groups and pages that spread anti-vaccine content.

Some anti-vaccine proponents banned on Facebook switched to using Instagram.

A December report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) argued that social media companies had not gone far enough in fighting misinformation. Frequent users of social media are more likely to be vaccine-hesitant, according to CCDH.