Facebook’s anti-vaxx profits
Social media giant allows new parents to be targeted by companies peddling homeopathic ‘alternatives’
FACEBOOK has been accused of “appalling” behaviour after it allowed advertisers offering “vaccine alternatives” to deliberately target new parents.
The company said in March that it would “reject” adverts that included “misinformation about vaccines”.
However, a Telegraph investigation found that it is boosting its profits by allowing advertisers to peddle unproven treatments purporting to offer an “alternative” to vaccinations.
Alarmingly, it allows the advertisers to ensure their content is seen by parents – even if they have never demonstrated any interest in deviating from the vaccinations on the NHS schedule.
It also permits advertisers to offer homeopathic “autism cures” to parents who have sought “support”.
Damian Collins, chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, condemned the practice as “appalling”, adding: “Things like this pose a real danger to people’s safety.”
Facebook said that while it did not want misinformation on its network, its combination of automated and human reviewers would not “catch every ad as it is created”. “We will act on any ads that are reported to us,” it added.
FACEBOOK is boosting its profits by allowing advertisers to cynically target new parents with homeopathic “vaccine alternatives”, a Daily Telegraph investigation has found. The social media giant is auctioning off advertising space for up to 18p per click to anyone peddling controversial homeopathic remedies beloved by anti-vaxxers.
Alarmingly, advertisers can ensure their content is shown to people whose children are of MMR vaccination age, and who may never have displayed any interest in alternatives to the immunisations recommended by the NHS.
In March, Facebook pledged to “reject” adverts spreading anti-vaccine misinformation.
However, reporters at this newspaper found that the web giant still allows adverts offering “homeopathic vaccination alternatives”, or treatment for supposed “vaccine injury”. It also allows adverts promoting homeopathic “autism cures” to be targeted at parents whose online search history shows they have been seeking support for autism.
Last night, Damian Collins, the chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, said: “It’s appalling that Facebook will allow people to target vulnerable people such as parents seeking information that could help their children, and allow peddlers of bogus remedies to use Facebook ad tools to target those people. 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 advert on Facebook, it boasted that it specialises 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 advert was that the reporter had originally spelt 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 advert.
It also allowed reporters to target it at “new parents (0-12 months)”, “parents with pre-schoolers (3-5 years)” and “parents with toddlers (aged 1-2)” – the age groups when they are due to receive most of their vaccinations, according to the NHS schedule. 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’ll reject them.”
Google, too, allowed journalists to run adverts casting doubt on the safety of vaccines and offering dubious treatments for autism. But it later admitted that the advert broke its policy around autism and removed it.
Unlike Facebook, it did not allow the “advertiser” to target users with no demonstrable interest in homeopathy or Cease therapy.