Facebook Ban Ads That Discourage Vaccination

Facebook has recently announced that the company will not accept ads that “discourage” vaccination, the latest example of Facebook’s more aggressive approach to regulating content and ads as the US election approaches and the Coronavirus pandemic lurks around.

The US Social media giant has said the ban on anti-vaccine ads is a part of a new effort to support immunization efforts around the world, including encouraging people to get a flu shot, according to the report.

“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,” wrote Kang-Xing Jin, the company’s head of health, and Rob Leathern, director of product management for the Facebook ads team.

They said the new policy builds on an existing policy that bans ads that contain “vaccine hoaxes.”

“Now, if an ad explicitly discourages someone from getting a vaccine, we’ll reject it,” the company’s post announcing the new policy said.

Last week, Facebook banned content related to the QAnon mass delusion, announced a ban on election and social issues ads after polls close on Nov. 3, and said it would remove content that encouraged people to engage in poll watching “when those calls use militarized language” or could intimidate voters or officials. On Monday, the company has announced that it would remove any Holocaust denial content from the social platform. In 2018, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he believed Holocaust denial should be allowed on Facebook as it represents free speech. Not surprisingly, yesterday, he said his thinking and views on the issue has “evolved and changed.”