Facebook, Once Again, Battling Misinformation About COVID Vaccines

Facebook is widening its scope of intelligence around what false claims it will remove from its platforms related to COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general starting today.

The tech giant has already begun removing debunked COVID-19 claims in December of last year and notifying customers when they had interacted with a post that has false information that same month. But now the list of potential claims that could get a post removed has grown.

Highlights from the new expanded list of false COVID-19 and vaccine-related claims that will be removed include:

– COVID-19 is man-made
– Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they were created to protect against
– It’s safer to get a disease than to get its vaccine
– Vaccines are dangerous, toxic, or cause autism

Facebook says it will start enforcing this policy immediately, focusing on groups, pages, and accounts that share content from its new list of debunked claims. The company also says it would consider removing the sources of the posts entirely if they became repeat offenders.

Expanding what counts as COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation is a smart move for Facebook, but some people worry what posts might get caught in the company’s new, larger misinformation net.