News: Facebook will remove false claims that have been “debunked by public health experts” about COVID-19 vaccines, he said. in one submit, the company explained how Facebook plans to apply your current ban on Covid misinformation, which aims to filter out posts that could cause “imminent physical damage” as countries around the world move closer to buying and launching vaccines. The deletions will apply to both Facebook and Instagram.
Effective vaccines are coming: The success of covid-19 vaccines is seen as critical to overcoming the pandemic, with several candidates in the final stages of testing. Earlier this week, the UK became the first country to approve a vaccine, granting permission to use the treatment developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and saying the first doses could be delivered to patients within days.
What is Facebook removing? The policy announcement is not exhaustive, but offers some examples of what would be removed from the site:
“This could include false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of vaccines. For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips or anything else that is not on the official vaccine ingredient list. We will also remove the COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories that we now know to be false: as if specific populations are being used without their consent to test the vaccine for safety. “
So, is this a big deal? Yes and no. It’s important that Facebook take a closer look at how it will deal with vaccine misinformation, especially as we enter what could be the most important public health moment in modern history. Misinformation about vaccines has long thrived on Facebook, so anything you announce in terms of a major ban or crackdown has the potential to be very important.
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The “but” here is also important and multifaceted. Facebook policies are only as effective as their enforcement. With health misinformation in particular, these bans will only succeed if they are effectively enforced within the many private groups on Facebook where bogus health claims are promoted and amplified. This has been an issue with the platform’s previous attempts to crack down on harmful lies.
Uneven application: Even after Facebook started to implement policies To limit the spread of vaccine misinformation in 2019, by restricting group and hashtag recommendations promoting these posts, for example, the anti-vaccine ecosystem has continued to thrive in the private spaces of the site. However, since the pandemic, Facebook has been more aggressive in removing some misleading health information, citing its policy against content that may cause imminent physical harm. A few weeks ago, Facebook anti-vaccine banned personality
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