Facebook says it will remove Covid-19 vaccine misinformation

Facebook on Thursday said it would remove posts that contain claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts, as the social network acts more aggressively to bat down coronavirus misinformation while falsehoods run rampant.

The move goes a step beyond how Facebook had handled misinformation about other kinds of vaccines. The company had previously made it more difficult to find vaccine misinformation that was not related to the coronavirus by “downranking” it, essentially making it less visible in people’s news feeds.

But Facebook said it planned to take down COVID-19 vaccine falsehoods entirely if the claims had been discredited or contradicted by health groups including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.