Facebook to remove more false alarms about Covid, vaccines

The social network said in a statement late on Monday that the move is taken after consultations with leading health organisations, including the WHO.

San Francisco: Facebook has announced to expand its efforts to remove false claims on its own platform and Instagram about Covid-19 and its vaccines.

The expanded list of false Covid-19 and vaccine-related claims that will be removed include: Covid-19 is man-made; vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they were created to protect against; it’s safer to get a disease than to get its vaccine and vaccines are dangerous, toxic, or cause autism, among others.

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The social network said in a statement late on Monday that the move is taken after consultations with leading health organisations, including the WHO.

Starting this week in the US, Facebook will feature links in the Covid-19 Information Center to local ministry of health websites to help people understand whether they’re eligible to get vaccinated and how to do so.

“And in the coming weeks, as more information becomes available, we’ll continue to expand this feature to more countries and improve it to make it easier for people to see where and when they can get vaccinated in just a few taps,” Facebook informed.

Building trust and confidence in vaccines is critical, so “we’re launching the largest worldwide campaign to help public health organisations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as vaccines become available to them”.

Facebook is giving $120 million in ad credits to help health ministries, NGOs and UN agencies reach billions of people around the world with Covid-19 vaccine and preventive health information.

“We’ll soon bring the Covid-19 Information Center to Instagram so people can access the latest information about vaccines across our apps”.