Facebook said Tuesday it is launching a new global policy that bans ads that discourage people from getting vaccines. The company previously had a policy against vaccine hoaxes that were publicly identified by global health organizations.
"Now, if an ad explicitly discourages someone from getting a vaccine, we'll reject it," the company's head of health, Kang-Xing Jin, and its director of product management, Rob Leathern, said in a blog post Tuesday.
The new ban comes amid a series of policy changes announced by the company to rid its social networks of problematic content it had previously been hesitant to remove. This includes a ban on Holocaust denialism announced earlier this week, a prohibition on pages and groups espousing the QAnon conspiracy theory last week, a temporary ban on political ads following the Nov. 3 U.S. election, a ban last month on any ads that seek to delegitimize the results of the U.S. election, and a decision last month to stop the spread of groups on its social network that focus on giving users health advice.
Facebook will still allow ads that advocate against government policies around vaccines, including the Covid-19 vaccine.
For instance, Facebook said it would allow ads like the ones a state delegate candidate in Virginia launched in August, which included the language "STOP FORCED CORONAVIRUS VACCINATIONS! ... All medications have risks, and we believe discussion alone of mandating a vaccine before it's released, without knowing if there's long term side effects, is both premature and dangerous."
W_Anderson on October 13rd, 2020 at 19:13 UTC »
Too fucking late, we are going to be dealing with antivax shit for awhile to come. In fact we could very well fuck up some of the immunities we’ve developed through vaccines because enough of whatever virus will be around to mutate and adapt to our vaccines.
Meph616 on October 13rd, 2020 at 17:59 UTC »
In other news, Facebook is reading all the data they collect with some tea leaves and expect a blue wave to sweep this election. Thus they want to pretend to show they are actually good actors and not in need of any regulations or monopoly busting.
Unfortunately knowing the Democrats this will probably actually be enough to stave off any actions from them.
Austin63867 on October 13rd, 2020 at 16:41 UTC »
Can't believe it took until 2020 to ban Holocaust Denial and Anti-Vax content on the biggest social media site there is