Facebook will now remove false claims about COVID-19 vaccines.
On Thursday morning, the social media giant announced it will start to remove posts that contain inaccurate information regarding coronavirus vaccines “that have been debunked by public health experts on Facebook and Instagram,” according to a press release.
The new policy, which is another way it is applying its COVID-19 misinformation policy, will look for false claims about the “safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccine.”
The release specifically referenced removing false claims that the vaccine includes microchips. Facebook will also remove conspiracy theories about vaccines developed to curb the pandemic, including one claiming that “specific populations are being used without their consent.”
Pharmaceutical companies are in the process of getting a vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration before the end of the year. Pfizer and Moderna both recently announced that they had vaccine candidates found to be 95% effective in preventing the coronavirus. There have been more than 13.9 million COVID-19 cases in the country, resulting in nearly 275,000 deaths, according to the John Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
On Wednesday, the United Kingdom approved the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, making the U.K. the first Western country to do so for any coronavirus vaccine.
The speed of the development has prompted some skepticism in the vaccine’s safety, though public officials have been working to ensure confidence in the public regarding the vaccine. Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have said they will take the vaccine on television to show others it is safe.
In a broader context, social media has been a hot topic amid the pandemic and the election. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Google, which all have their own community standards and can choose how to enforce those policies, have been accused of censorship from the Right.
