On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it will ban ads on its platform that discourage vaccinations.
In a blog post the company said: “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. We don’t want these ads on our platform.”
Now, if an ad explicitly discourages someone from getting a vaccine, we’ll reject it, they added.
The latest changes in policy come as various conspiracy theories about the ongoing pandemic spread through social media, fueling anti-lockdown protests.
Facebook says it will begin enforcing the new policy over the next few days. The anti-vaccination groups themselves will continue to be allowed on the platform organic or unpaid content discouraging vaccination is still permitted, per Facebook’s platform rules.
Alongside the new ads policy, Facebook will actively promote vaccination through a public information campaign, and direct users to vaccination sites using its preventative health tool.
