Facebook to remove posts with false vaccine claims

Facebook is expanding its efforts to remove more Covid-19 conspiracies that discourage vaccination against coronavirus, according to an announcement by the company.

"Since December, we've removed false claims about Covid-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts. Today, following consultations with leading health organisations, 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," the company said on Monday.

According to the new rules, Facebook will remove posts claiming that Covid-19 vaccines aren't effective, that it's "safer to get the disease than to get the vaccine" and that vaccines are toxic, dangerous or cause autism, reports Xinhua.

Facebook will enforce the new policy with a particular focus on pages, groups and accounts that violate the rules, and expand the enforcement over the coming weeks, warning that groups, pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram that repeatedly share debunked claims may be removed altogether.

"These new policies will help us continue to take aggressive action against misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines," the company said.

Facebook has taken steps to limit Covid-19 vaccine misinformation since December 2020, removing posts containing some misinformation about the vaccine, such as "false claims that Covid-19 vaccines contain microchips."