Social media giant Facebook announced on Monday that it will expand its scope of action by banning those promoting false claims about coronavirus vaccines and others vaccines.
The social media company said in a blog post it was increasing the types of false claims about the coronavirus, its vaccine and other vaccines that it will remove, including that COVID-19 is a man-made virus, and that vaccines are dangerous. Such claims are already prohibited in ads on the platform.
Facebook said it would remove groups, pages and accounts that repeatedly share the debunked claims.
The company has introduced more stringent policies to combat COVID-19 vaccine misinformation during the pandemic, but has had a more hands-off approach to misinformation about other vaccines, which has rarely been removed and only when it was considered to risk “imminent harm”.
In December, Facebook announced it would remove false claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had been debunked by public health experts, though in recent weeks news reports have identified Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts still spreading these false claims.
