Facebook tries to pre-empt regulation by squeezing anti-vaxxers

“I JUST BELIEVE strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” Mark Zuckerberg, the social-media boss, said last year. Yet despite Mr Zuckerberg’s hope, that is what Facebook has become. Like a power company, Facebook can illuminate certain voices, while pushing others off the grid. The most high-profile example of the social-media firm wielding its might was in January, when Facebook kicked Mr Trump off for stoking the riots at the Capitol. (Twitter also suspended him.) Facebook’s decision is currently under review by the social-media firm’s internal jury, the Oversight Board, which advises the company on thorny content issues, of which there are plenty more.

On February 8th Facebook announced that it was taking another stand on what could not appear on its platform: falsehoods about vaccinations. The company will now remove posts and block groups that claim vaccines make people ill or cause autism; previously the company had only demoted such claims, giving them less prominence in users’ feeds and in search results. Facebook and other internet companies have been under pressure by politicians and the press to do more to police anti-vax content since 2019, when measles outbreaks in New York prompted a flurry of nonsense. Covid-19 has given the subject new urgency and attention.