Facebook planning to remove anti-vaccination fake news and adverts following backlash and criticism
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Following backlash and criticism over the spread of anti-vaccination rhetoric and sponsored advertisements targeting pregnant women in states seeing a surge in measles outbreaks, Facebook said it may reduce or remove the false information from the platform, according to a statement received by Bloomberg. The social network also said it could decide to demote anti-vaccination content from Facebook search results too.
Users have the ability to report content for review at any time, and health-related information is eligible for fact-checking by Facebook’s fact-checking partners in 25 countries. The company told Business Insider it is exploring ways to make educational information about vaccines more easily available while also minimizing harm caused by misinformation, however it is still “thinking through what the right approach for this effort might look like.”
“We are committed to accurate and useful information throughout Facebook,” a company spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement on Thursday. “We remove content that violates our Community Standards, down-rank articles that might be misleading, and show third-party fact-checker articles to provide people with more context. We have more to do, and will continue efforts to provide educational information on important topics like health.”
It is unclear when Facebook may be rolling such efforts out or if it has already.
