Facebook announced that it will begin removing false claims about Covid-19 vaccines to prevent "imminent physical harm."
The company has announced that it is accelerating plans to stop misleading and false information on its platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. The company's strategy has been accelerated by seeing the increase in fake news about this vaccine, following the announcement of the approval of the first vaccine in the United Kingdom.
Among the claims that will not be allowed to be distributed are lies about the vaccine's ingredients, safety, effectiveness, and side effects.
It will also ban false and long-spread conspiracy theories that claim coronavirus vaccines will contain a microchip to track or monitor patients.
What does the Facebook announcement say?
This announcement, as reported by the BBC, states that all false claims regarding Covid-19 vaccines "which have been denied by public health experts" will be removed.
Facebook announced that since January, it has removed a large amount of content about the pandemic, such as fake medical cures and treatments, or false claims that the virus does not exist.
In October, it also stopped advertising that discouraged people from getting the vaccine. This is in continuation of the policy of "removing misinformation about the virus that can cause physical harm," the company said in a statement.
"This includes false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or even side effects of the vaccine and false claims that Covid-19 vaccines consist of microchips and the like."
"We will also dispel conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines, which are already known to be false claims."
The need to react quickly to these false claims has increased mainly after announcements of vaccine discoveries by several companies in Europe and the US.