#Facebook announces ban for anti-vax ads

Facebook announced on Tuesday that it was banning all ads that contain anti-vaccination messages, adding to its previous policy about vaccine misinformation in ads.

The company previously rejected ads that contained misinformation about vaccines. However, the misinformation needed to be identified as a hoax by health organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization.

Tuesday’s policy change will prohibit “ads discouraging people from getting vaccinated,” Facebook said in addition to the previous policy

“We don’t want these ads on our platform,” Facebook said in a blog post.

The social media giant said the policy change will begin rolling out over the “next few days,” but there is an exception for ads that advocate for or against legislation or government policies about vaccines. The company framed the announcement around the coronavirus vaccine continuing to be developed and flu season is looming.

The anti-vax ads policy comes amid a flurry of changes the company has announced in recent weeks.

On Monday, Facebook made a policy reversal on Holocaust denial content, vowing to remove it despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments in 2018 where he said that while it was “deeply offensive,” he didn’t “believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong.”

The company also announced earlier this month that it would ban the QAnon conspiracy theory across the platform.