Facebook is taking huge leaps in the fight against anti-vaxxers. The company plans to lower the rank of pages and groups that proliferate false information regarding vaccinations.
"These teams and Pages won't be enclosed in recommendations or in predictions after you kind into Search," Monika Bickert, Facebook's vice president of global policy management, said in a statement.
She emphasized that the company will reject ads that contain false information about vaccinations. It is possible that accounts will be disabled if they act against company policies.
Personal accounts that spread false information about vaccines will not be disabled as this does not act against the company's community standards. Posts that are blatant in violating the standards will be removed. However, this will not happen to individual posts.
Bickert according the corporate is additionally "exploring ways that to share academic info regarding vaccines," possibly by adding educational information to inaccurate posts.
There will be a massive roll-out of the said campaign and will be done in the next few weeks. According to Hootsuite, approximately 50 percent of US teens use Facebook and Americans aged 65 years and older have increased to 41% since 2012. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, will not show messages about anti-vaccination.
The company will also act upon the recommendation of the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding verified vaccine hoaxes.
Bickert same, "For example, if a group or Page admin posts this vaccine misinformation, we will exclude the entire group or Page from recommendations, reduce these groups and Pages'
distribution in News Feed and Search, and reject ads with this info."
