As we have mentioned on several occasions, vaccines save millions of life every year. But although we have a lot of scientific evidence available to prove its benefits, there is still erroneous information about them circulating on the Internet, making the anti-vaccine movement affects world health.
Over the years, various measures have been taken: some countries make them mandatory so that children can access childcare centers, while in others they apply fines to parents who do not vaccinate their children. Now Facebook, one of the great social networks joins the fight against the anti-vaccine movement, beginning to eliminate and reduce the visibility of content that disseminates false information about vaccines.
This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the anti-vaccine movement as one of the 10 threats to global health in 2019, and it is for us less: as a consequence of this movement, diseases that were already considered eradicated have resurfaced, affecting the health of all people.
In Babies and more If you go out of your way to protect your children, vaccinate them: the strong message of UNICEF Fortunately, the world has not crossed its arms and in addition to the list of countries that have come together to counter this movement against vaccines, Facebook, the most popular social network, has stated that fight the wrong information that is spread on your platform about vaccines.
Through a statement published in the Facebook Newsroom, Monika Bickert, the global vice president of social network policy management, share the actions they will take to do it:
We are working to tackle disinformation about vaccines on Facebook by reducing their distribution and providing people with authorized information on this topic. We are starting by taking a series of steps:
We will reduce the ranking of groups and pages that disseminate misinformation about vaccines in the News and Search sections. These pages and groups will not be included in the recommendations or predictions when you type in the Search box.
When we find advertising that includes misinformation about vaccines, we will reject it. We have also eliminated target market options related to this, such as "vaccine controversies." For advertising accounts that continue to violate our policies, we will take more actions, such as disabling them.
We will not display or recommend content that contains misinformation about vaccines in the Explore area of Instagram, or in the pages of hashtags.
We are exploring new ways to share educational information about vaccines to show when people encounter erroneous information about this topic.
In their statement, they also comment that if they find in their social networks any of the false information that organizations such as the WHO or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have denied, they will take action against those who publish it:
For example, if an administrator of a group or Facebook page publishes false information about vaccines, we will completely exclude the group and pages from appearing in recommendations, reduce its distribution in the News and Search sections and reject advertising with this type of information.
In addition, they comment that They are exploring and analyzing to find ways to give users of the social network more accurate information about vaccines, from expert organizations, in the main results of the search section, as well as in the pages dedicated to this topic, but which will provide more information about this later.
In Babies and more WHO again warns of dangerous myths about vaccinationFinally, they conclude their statement by mentioning that they are fully committed to community security and will continue to expand on this issue, so reduce the spread of misinformation about vaccines.
Social networks: a source of massive information
Facebook's posture and statement are not anything. Much of the information that has made the anti-vaccine movement take force and continue to increase worldwide, has been mainly due to erroneous information that has been shared through social networks.
While the new measures published by Facebook do not end the problem, no doubt It is a first step to begin to counteract the dissemination of false information about vaccines, and begin to better educate all people about what it means not to vaccinate their children.
