Facebook Bans Debunked Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines

A customer walks past a sign indicating that a COVID-19 vaccine is not yet available at Walgreens, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020, in Long Beach, Calif.

Ashley Landis / AP

Facebook is banning claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts, as governments prepare to roll out the first vaccinations against the virus.

That includes posts that make false claims about how safe and effective the vaccines are, and about their ingredients and side effects.

“For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” Facebook’s head of health, Kang-Xing Jin, said in a blog post. “We will also remove conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines that we know today are false: like specific populations are being used without their consent to test the vaccine’s safety.”