Facebook To Tackle False Vaccine Claims Already Flooding Platform

AP: Facebook To Remove COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Misinformation
Facebook said Thursday it will start removing false claims about COVID-19 vaccines, in its latest move to counter a tide of coronavirus-related online misinformation. In the coming weeks, the social network will begin taking down any Facebook or Instagram posts with false information about the vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts. (12/3)

NPR: Facebook Bans Debunked Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines
That includes posts that make false claims about how safe and effective the vaccines are, and about their ingredients and side effects. “For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” Facebook’s head of health, Kang-Xing Jin, said in a blog post. “We will also remove conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines that we know today are false: like specific populations are being used without their consent to test the vaccine’s safety.” (Bond, 12/3)

CNBC: Facebook To Remove Misinformation About Covid Vaccines
Facebook’s policy has been to remove false claims about Covid-19 that it says could lead to “imminent physical harm,” such as posts promoting false cures or bogus conspiracy theories linking the virus to 5G. The company removed 12 million posts as a result of this policy between March and October. But it hadn’t yet taken a firm stance on vaccines, other than to ban ads that promote anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. (Brown, 12/3)

In other news about Facebook —

Brookings Institution: How Should Facebook And Twitter Handle Trump After He Leaves Office?
[President] Trump receives preferential treatment on social media due to his status as president. According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump has made over 22,000 false or misleading statements since he became president, almost 4,000 of which came from Twitter. Some of these inaccurate claims have been repeated hundreds of times both on and offline. Though a number of his falsehoods violate the community standard guidelines of Facebook and Twitter, they have not censored his posts nor removed his posting privileges. Instead, they flag particular statements as “disputed” and guide readers to alternative sources of information. (Robison and West, 12/2)

USA Today: Facebook Ranks Anti-Black Hate Speech Over Comments About White People
Facebook puts a higher priority on detecting and deleting racist slurs and hate speech against Black people, Muslims, Jews, the LGBTQ community and people of more than one race than on statements such as “White people are stupid” and “Men are pigs.” The company said Thursday its automated moderation systems are being retrained to focus on hate speech targeting historically marginalized and oppressed groups, which “can be the most harmful.”  (Guynn, 12/3)