Facebook expands fight against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation to include kids

Vaccine misinformation has been pervasive subject on Fb for years, and it wasn’t till earlier this yr that the web site lastly introduced insurance policies that may tackle the issue. Now, the social community has expanded these insurance policies and its COVID-19 vaccination efforts to incorporate children shortly after the FDA licensed the emergency use of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for youngsters ages 5 to eleven.

Within the coming weeks, it can ship in-feed English and Spanish reminders to customers within the US that the COVID-19 vaccine is now obtainable for youths. These reminders will even embrace a hyperlink that’ll assist customers discover the closest vaccination website. Maybe, extra importantly, it can increase its anti-vaccine misinformation insurance policies to take away claims that COVID-19 vaccines for youths don’t exist and that the vaccine for youngsters is untested. It’s going to additionally take away any declare that COVID-19 vaccines can kill or significantly hurt children, that they are not efficient for youngsters in any respect and that something aside from a COVID-19 vaccine can inoculate kids in opposition to the virus. 

Fb says its combat in opposition to vaccine misinformation is a part of an ongoing effort in partnership with the CDC, WHO and different well being authorities. It guarantees to maintain on updating its insurance policies and ban any new declare in regards to the COVID-19 vaccine for youngsters that may emerge sooner or later. The web site, which now operates beneath its mother or father firm Meta, says it has eliminated greater than 20 million items of content material from Fb and Instagram because the starting of the pandemic. As of August 2021, it has additionally banned 3,000 accounts, teams and pages for repeatedly breaking its well being misinformation insurance policies.