If at first you don’t succeed, keep telling people that you’re trying again.
Facebook announced Monday that, over a year into a pandemic that has killed more than 460,000 people in the U.S. alone, it intends to do more about the pervasive anti-vaccine content sloshing across its platform. Specifically, the social media giant said it will remove a specific set of false claims about both COVID-19 and vaccines.
Of course, we’ve heard this promise before. In March 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook promised to crack down on anti-vaccine content. In October of 2020, Facebook said it would finally ban anti-vaccine ads. And in December of 2020, Facebook insisted it would ban COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
As Monday’s announcement makes clear, Facebook still has some work to do.
“Today, we are expanding our efforts to remove false claims on Facebook and Instagram about COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines and vaccines in general during the pandemic,” explains the company in a blog post. “Today, following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines.”
Facebook kindly provides us with examples of statements that, going forward, will theoretically no longer be allowed on the platform:
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“COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured”
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“Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against”
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“It’s safer to get the disease than to get the vaccine”
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“Vaccines are toxic, dangerous or cause autism”
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The company says it will start implementing the new policy immediately. Notably, Facebook also says that if a Group or account repeatedly posts or shares the now-banned anti-vax content, it may boot it from the platform entirely.
Better late than never.