Social media giant Facebook has announced that it will soon label all posts that discuss coronavirus vaccination with links to official information about COVID-19 from organizations like the World Health Organization.
TechCrunch reports that Facebook has announced plans to label all posts that discuss coronavirus vaccination with links to official information about the virus. In a blog post, the company stated:
We have already connected more than 2 billion people to reliable COVID-19 information, and today, as access to COVID-19 vaccines expands, we are going even further and with the goal of helping 50 million people to one step closer to being vaccinated.
To do this, we are helping people learn more about COVID-19 vaccines and find out when and where they can get them through our apps. Some of the ways we are doing this:
- A tool to connect people to information about where and when to get a COVID-19 vaccine
- Expanding our COVID-19 Information Center for Instagram
- Expand official WhatsApp chatbots on COVID-19 to register people for vaccinations with health authorities and governments
- Add labels on COVID-19 vaccine posts to show additional information from the World Health Organization
- Providing aggregated trends in real time on COVID-19 vaccinations, intention to be vaccinated and reasons for hesitation to public officials to inform equitable distribution of the vaccine
By working closely with national and global health authorities and using our scale to reach people quickly, we are doing our part to help people obtain reliable information, get vaccinated and meet safely.
Facebook is also said to be implementing some “temporary” measures aimed at limiting the spread of incorrect information related to the vaccine, stating that it is reducing the distribution of content from users who claim to violate the site’s policies on COVID-19 and information on vaccines.
Facebook will also reduce the distribution of any COVID-19 or vaccine content that fact-checking partners have classified as “Missing context”.
Facebook also plans to “raise information from trusted sources even more when people search for information about COVID-19 or vaccines.”
Read more about Facebook’s plans to crack down on coronavirus misinformation on TechCrunch here.
Lucas Nolan is a Breitbart News reporter who covers issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact us by secure email at [email protected]