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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Facebook v. Vaccine Disinformation

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread  And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.

 Ian Carlos Campbell at The Verge:

Facebook is expanding what false claims it will remove from its platforms related to COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general starting today. The company began removing debunked COVID-19 claims in December of last year and notifying customers when they had interacted with a post that has false information that same month. But now the list of potential claims that could get a post removed has grown.

Highlights from the new expanded list of false COVID-19 and vaccine-related claims that will be removed include:
Facebook says it will start enforcing this policy immediately, focusing on groups, pages, and accounts that share content from its new list of debunked claims. The company also says it would consider removing the sources of the posts entirely if they became repeat offenders.