Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
On Tuesday, Facebook announced a new policy banning ads that discourage the use of vaccines. Timed to the beginning of flu season, the new policy is also aimed at the ongoing proliferation of anti-vaccine groups on Facebook and growing skepticism about forthcoming vaccines for COVID-19.
“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,” the company said in a blog post. “We don’t want these ads on our platform.”
There are still several ads from anti-vaccination groups currently running on the platform, but Facebook says it will begin enforcing the new policy “over…