Facebook on Monday announced a major reduction in the spread of what the tech giant considers to be “false claims” about COVID-19 and vaccines.
Beforehand, the company will remove from its platform any misinformation about coronavirus and vaccines, including claims that the virus was made in a laboratory, that vaccines are not effective in preventing disease, that it is safer to get the disease than the vaccine, and that vaccines are generally toxic, dangerous, or cause autism.
“In addition to exchanging reliable information, we are expanding our efforts to eliminate false claims on Facebook and Instagram about COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines and the pandemic in general,” said Kang-Xing Jin, the company’s chief health officer. he said in an editorial update. Today, following consultations with leading health organizations, including the WHO, we are expanding the list of false claims that we will remove to include additional denied claims about COVID-19 and vaccines.
The exhaustive list of false claims that are now being removed is listed on the Facebook Help Center website. It generally 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 strong focus on Pages, Groups and Accounts that violate these rules, and we will continue to expand our application in the coming weeks,” wrote Integrity Facebook Vice President Guy Rosen. “Groups, pages and Facebook and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share these rejected complaints can be completely removed.”
Rosen added that the company intends to access credible information through “promot[ing] Relevant, authoritative results “when people search for vaccine or coronavirus content on the platform.
He mentioned that the monitoring of the content regarding the coronavirus pandemic has been going on since December, only now the list of false statements has expanded.
However, the move marks a significant deviation from past actions. As reported by the New York Times in the past, the company has opted to “downrank” coronavirus misinformation or push content lower in people’s news feeds. But now the company is taking action by eliminating this content altogether.
According to the newsroom, the new action is in response to a ruling by the company’s Oversight Board, which found that its rules and standards for health-related misinformation were “improperly vague”.
The news comes as Facebook and other major social media companies are under heavy scrutiny for their censorship practices. If the new action serves as an indication, it seems that Facebook does not intend to give up its commitment to aggressively suppress content.