Facebook on Monday announced a major reduction in the spread of what the tech giant considers “false claims” about COVID-19 and vaccines.
In the future, the company will remove from its platform any erroneous information about coronavirus and vaccines, including claims that the virus was manufactured in a laboratory, that vaccines are not effective in preventing disease, that it is safer to obtain the disease that the vaccine and vaccines, in general, are toxic, dangerous, or cause autism.
“In addition to sharing reliable information, we are expanding our efforts to eliminate false claims on Facebook and Instagram about vaccines against COVID-19, COVID-19 and vaccines in general during the pandemic,” the health chief said. company, Kang-Xing Jin, said in an editorial update. “Today, following consultations with major health organizations, including the WHO, we are expanding the list of false claims that we will remove to include additional discredited claims about COVID-19 and vaccines.”
The exhaustive list of false claims that are now subject to deletion is displayed on the Facebook Help Center website. It broadly includes any content that minimizes the severity of COVID-19 or discourages good health practices, such as wearing a mask.
“We will begin implementing this policy immediately, with a particular focus on pages, groups and accounts that violate these rules, and we will continue to expand our application over the coming weeks,” wrote Facebook Integrity Vice President Guy Rosen. “Groups, pages and Facebook and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share these rejected claims can be removed altogether.”
Rosen added that the company plans to access credible information by “promot[ing] relevant and authorized results “when people search for vaccine or coronavirus-related content on the platform.
He noted that monitoring of content on the coronavirus pandemic has been underway since December, only now the list of false claims has expanded.
However, the move marks a significant deviation from past actions. As reported by the New York Times, in the past, the company chose to “reduce” misinformation about the coronavirus or bring down the content of people’s news. But now the company is taking steps to eliminate this content altogether.
According to the editorial update, the new action responds to a ruling by the company’s Supervisory Board, which found its rules and standards for health-related misinformation to be “vaguely inaccurate”.
The news comes when Facebook and other major social media companies are under intense scrutiny for their censorship practices. If the new action serves as an indication, it appears that Facebook does not intend to cede the removal of aggressive content.