Facebook announced on Feb. 8 that it will take down posts with claims about vaccines that health organizations or its fact-checkers deem false.
“Today, following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines,” Facebook stated in a blog post.
Facebook added that it will “begin enforcing this policy immediately,” adding that it will focus on publishers, groups, and accounts that violate its rules.
“We are also requiring some admins for groups with admins or members who have violated our COVID-19 policies to temporarily approve all posts within their group. Claims about COVID-19 or vaccines that do not violate these policies will still be eligible for review by our third-party fact-checkers, and if they are rated false, they will be labeled and demoted,” the company stated.
Twitter announced in December 2020 that it would also begin labeling and removing posts about the CCP virus vaccine that it deems false.
And separately, earlier this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call that the Menlo Park, California-based company will start to reduce political posts.
“One of the top pieces of feedback that we are hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” he said. “So, one theme for this year is that we’re going to continue to focus on helping millions of more people participate in healthy communities, and we’re going to focus even more on being a force for bringing people closer together.”