On Monday, the company announced several ways to better combat misinformation about vaccines, including making it difficult to locate accounts through Facebook-owned Instagram searches that discourage people from being vaccinated.
The announcement came a day after CNN Business reported that Instagram continued to feature antivaxxer accounts prominently in its search results, while Facebook groups protesting the vaccines remained easy to find. The findings raised concerns among public health experts, as the United States is in the midst of its largest vaccine rollout to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Facebook (FB) said Monday that it is “expanding” its efforts to remove false claims on its eponymous platform and Instagram about the coronavirus, Covid-19 vaccines and vaccines in general during the pandemic.
The company also announced that it will begin showing links in its “Covid-19 Information Center” to local health websites to help users determine whether they are eligible to receive the vaccine and how they can get it.
Facebook has long struggled to deal with antivaxxer content. In December, the company said it would drop allegations about Covid-19 vaccines that were unmasked by public health officials, such as baseless conspiracy theories that they contain microchips. Previously, Facebook’s policies prohibited incorrect information about Covid-19 that “contributed to the risk of imminent violence or physical harm”.
In the midst of a measles outbreak in the United States almost two years ago, Facebook has promised to combat misinformation about vaccines by limiting the reach of this content on its platforms, but has not reached a total ban. In March 2019, Facebook said it would “reduce the ranking of groups and pages that spread misinformation about vaccines” by not including them in recommendations or forecasts when users type in the search bar. But even so, antivaxxer information was easily searchable on Instagram.