Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook will not remove anti-vaxxer content
People should be allowed to say they're 'worried' about getting jabs, says the social media giant's founder
Facebook won’t remove anti-vaxxer content because people should be allowed to say they are “worried” about getting jabs, Mark Zuckerberg has said.
The founder and CEO of the social media giant said he doesn’t plan to shift his company’s lenient stance on vaccine conspiracies when one is found for Covid-19.
However, Mr Zuckerberg’s comments prompted condemnation from UK MPs, who described his stance as “terrifying” and said it risked giving “further oxygen to deadly” vaccine fake news.
Facebook has come under increasing pressure since the outbreak of the pandemic over the rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding vaccinations on its platform.
In an interview with the US website Axios, Mr Zuckerberg said that Facebook took down any health misinformation that it deemed could cause an ‘imminent risk of harm’.
However, he said he felt people should be able to question the effectiveness of vaccines, or express doubts about how they were being administered.
The 36-year-old added: “I think that if someone is pointing out a case where a vaccine caused harm or that they are worried about, then it's a difficult thing to say, from my perspective, that you shouldn’t be allowed to express that at all.”
Concern has been growing in the UK over the prevalence of social media vaccine conspiracies and their ability to undermine take-up when one is eventually rolled out for coronavirus.
In July, Health Secretary Matt Hancock met with Sir Nick Clegg, now Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, over the social media giant’s approach to anti-vaccine fake news, after warning in the House of Commons that “people who propagate untrue myths about vaccines are putting lives at risk”.
Responding to the Facebook boss’s latest comments, Chris Elmore MP, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Media, told the Telegraph: “Mark Zuckerberg's comments risk giving further oxygen to the deadly, orchestrated, and ill-foundered anti-vax misinformation circulating on his platform.
“As so often, instead of leadership and action, Mr Zuckerberg is offering qualification and prevarication. If he does so because of financial concerns, that is shameful; if he does so because he believes it, it’s terrifying.”
"We are facing a crisis to which the only solution is a clinically safe and effective vaccine.”
