Facebook to take down false COVID vaccine claims, stricter policies to come in effect

With the COVID-19 vaccines came the rumours of its side effects. Unfortunately, social media plays an important role in creating terror and anguish among users. Looking at the matter at hand, Facebook gave a go-ahead for the removal of false information on the vaccine henceforth, so that the procedure for the vaccine roll-out is as smooth and tension-free as possible.

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Facebook to take down false claims of Covid Vaccine and Autism

In December last year, the company had begun the process of removing false information and posts that promoted it but to no avail as the rumours started multiplying in number as and how the vaccine roll-out dates started approaching. As a result, Facebook had to re-enforce a stricter policy with a bigger list of potential claims. The new and expanded list of false COVID-19 information that is instructed to be removed immediately include -

• Claims that vaccines are dangerous, toxic, or cause autism.
• Claims that vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they were created to protect against.
• Claims that COVID-19 vaccines are untested.
• Claims that people died after taking the vaccine.

Facebook also mentioned that it will be filtering and improving the search results for whenever a user decides to surf for information related to COVID vaccine on the platforms they regulate. Apart from the attempt of stopping the dissemination of misinformation, Facebook is also actively making adjustments to how the real and factual information will actually be delivered to the users. As the vaccine roll-out dates come nearer, the company has also made plans on adding new features that will provide links to the COVID-19 Information Centre and enable their users to sign up for vaccine directly from their portal or through Instagram.

The company has also extended $120 million in ad credits to help NGOs and health ministers spread the correct information to billions of users through their platform. Many have come in support of Facebook's radical change in policy, calling it a smart move amidst the commotion they personally went through when they recently notified their customers about WhatsApp's privacy policy changes.

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