Facebook auctions space for anti-vax ads
New parents targeted, U.K. probe finds
LONDON • Facebook is boosting its profits by allowing advertisers to target new parents with homeopathic “vaccine alternatives,” a Daily Telegraph investigation in England has found. The social media giant is auctioning off advertising space to anyone peddling controversial homeopathic remedies beloved by anti-vaxxers.
Alarmingly, advertisers can ensure their content is shown to people whose children are of vaccination age, and who may never have displayed any interest in alternatives to the immunizations recommended by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).
In March, Facebook pledged to “reject” advertisements spreading anti-vaccine misinformation.
However, reporters at the Telegraph found that the web giant still allows advertisements offering “homeopathic vaccination alternatives,” or treatment for supposed “vaccine injury.” It also allows advertisements promoting homeopathic “autism cures” to be targeted at parents whose online search history shows they have been seeking support for autism.
“It’s appalling that Facebook will allow people to target vulnerable people such as parents seeking information that could help their children, and allow pedlars of bogus remedies to use Facebook ad tools to target those people,” said British MP Damian Collins, chairman of the U.K. parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
“I find it astonishing that Facebook did not spot this, and stop it.”
Telegraph journalists set up a website purporting to be a homeopathic business offering a series of controversial therapies. In an advertisement on Facebook, it boasted that it specializes in “vaccine alternatives for kids, vaccine injury, Cease therapy and autism cures.”
Cease therapy — Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression — is a controversial autism “treatment” that has no scientific evidence to support it. But Facebook’s only objection to the Telegraph’s advertisement was that the reporter had originally spelled the word “Cease” in capital letters, and not in the lower-case text it prefers.
Once the journalists changed the text to “Cease,” the social media firm accepted the advertisement.
A message received on the same day confirmed that it had been approved.
Facebook said yesterday: “We do not want ads that include widely debunked misinformation or make misleading and unsubstantiated claims on our platform. When we find them, we will reject them.”
Google, too, allowed journalists to run advertisements casting doubt on the safety of vaccines and offering dubious treatments for autism. But it later admitted that the advertisement broke its policy around autism and removed it, saying it did not want ads that were “misleading.”