Facebook Takes Some Action

Dear Supporters,

Facebook has today made a welcome announcement about action it's taking against anti-vaccine groups.

But first, thank you very much for signing our petition asking Facebook to remove anti-vaccine groups.

So far we have over 35,000 signatures and I want to give a shout out to the 133 people who have also donated to the campaign. This has had a a huge impact and lead to media attention. 

This petition has been featured by News Corp in newspapers and online news nationally in Australia and around the world.

Additionally, we have been featured by Babyology (a prominent parenting website) and by the Southern Cross Austereo radio network.

Elsewhere the media have been running numerous stories about the action taken by other social media platforms and putting pressure on Facebook to do the same.

Today Facebook have announced they will remove anti-vaccine groups from search results and demote the content in timelines. They will also reject any ads which contain misinformation about vaccines.

This will also take place on their Instagram platform.

This is excellent news and a real step in the right direction. It will have a big effect in preventing parents being lead astray by the swathes of misinformation on Facebook. 

However, I am not ready to declare victory on this petition. The petition's goal was to have the existing anti-vaccine groups and pages removed.

I still believe this removal needs to happen. While the groups remain, the echo chambers still exist. Although it will be more difficult for the groups to recruit new members, existing members will consolidate their mislead beliefs and will still be able to share misinformation from anti-vaccine pages across the service.

Until these groups are removed, Facebook is still a haven for anti-vaccine misinformation.

Please do what you can to support this petition - share on social media and contribute if you can.

Only when these groups are removed will the anti-vaccine movement come to a halt.