Under fire for serving up anti-vaccine propaganda, Facebook announced today that it will remove groups and pages that share anti-vaccine misinformation from its recommendations. The company also pledged that it will stop allowing advertisers to target people who Facebook’s advertising algorithm identifies as interested in “vaccine controversies.”
The news comes three weeks after Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a stern letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, criticizing Facebook and Instagram for “surfacing and recommending messages that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.” When kids don’t get vaccinated due to thoroughly debunked myths that vaccines cause diseases like autism, dangerous diseases like measles can spread....