When the lives of many people are at stake, there’s no room for compromises. We have to admit that false claims online represent a reality that we’re dealing with every day, and they’re thriving as long as highly-important topics will generate lots of traffic. The same thing happens in the case of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and Facebook has an antidote for that matter.
The Verge announces that the world’s most popular social network made an update to its COVID-19 misinformation policy that will certainly upset a lot of people. The vaccine is on its way to full approval, and urgent measures are practically mandatory.
No more fake news about COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook
Hopefully, Facebook’s decision is not too late to stop false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. One vaccine for the pandemic disease has already been authorized in the UK, and other approvals are expected soon in the US and other countries.
The Facebook policies previously involved removing posts that are containing false information about the coronavirus that could lead to “imminent physical harm.” If you try to make posts about a COVID-19 vaccine that contains claims debunked by public health experts, Facebook won’t allow it anymore.
Conspiracy theorists, beware!
We also can’t ignore that there are many people across the world who are sceptical about COVID-19 vaccines for various reasons. They believe the substances in question are jeopardizing people’s health in one way or another, claims that are totally disproven by the health experts.
Facebook also says that the new rules won’t be applied overnight. As official info about COVID-19 vaccines will be issued by the authorities, the list of wild claims that need removal will be updated by Facebook.
The COVID-19 infections keep spreading throughout the world, as there’s a total of almost 66 million cases and more than 1.5 million deaths.
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