Facebook will try to reduce both anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Instagram.
According today's Facebook announcement, the company will run a new action plan to combat it misinformations around vaccinations. The start will be by downgrading groups and pages that spread false information about vaccines so that they appear less in the Facebook News Feed. And on Instagram respectively, the company will prevent anti-vaccination content from appearing on Instagram Explore and hashtag pages.
The crackdown on Facebook is about making it harder to find these pages. Antispammers will be excluded from the recommendations and will not appear as suggested when typing in the Facebar search bar. Ads containing misinformation about vaccinations will be rejected.
According to Facebook, this campaign will draw on the experience of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of USA, to help determine which pages are spreading truth and which are spreading vaccine-related fiction. These organizations have identified hoax pages and common vaccine misconceptions.
Facebook is the latest social network to take no action on vaccinations. Last month, the Pinterest took steps to prevent relevant content from appearing on searching results, and YouTube began blocking anti-vaccine advertising channels.
