Facebook launched a new global policy on Tuesday banning advertisements that discourage people from getting vaccines.
Per the new policy, the social media platform will also ban ads that challenge the safety or effectiveness of vaccines as well as those claiming the diseases vaccines prevent are harmless, NPR reported.
The policy change, following widespread pleas for the social network to limit harmful and misleading content, also applies to Instagram and will take effect across both platforms – which claim more than 3 billion active monthly users combined – within days, the outlet reported.
“We don’t want these ads on our platform,” Facebook officials Kang-Xing Jin and Rob Leathern wrote in a joint blog post, adding, “Our goal is to help messages about the safety and efficacy of vaccines reach a broad group of people, while prohibiting ads with misinformation that could harm public health efforts.”
Facebook’s prior policy prohibited only the spreading of vaccine hoaxes that were “publicly identified by global health organizations,” CNBC reported.
“Now, if an ad explicitly discourages someone from getting a vaccine, we’ll reject it,” the company’s blog post stated.
The new policy will still allow ads that “advocate against government vaccination policies,” but explicit discouragement of vaccinations or false claims regarding them will be prohibited, Facebook spokesperson Devon Kearns told NPR.
According to CNBC, the plan applies only to paid advertisements and in no way addresses information shared in regular posts.
https://twitter.com/adrs/status/1316082985733697536
Facebook also said on Tuesday that it is working with the World Health Organization and UNICEF on messaging campaigns to boost immunization rates and that it would direct people to information about the flu vaccine and where U.S. users can get it, NPR reported.
