The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Facebook disables misleading HIV ads
Activists: False claims that drug regimen is unsafe steered some people away.
Activists argued that claims in the ads about the drug regimen being unsafe were false and steered some people away.
Facebook has quietly started removing some misleading ads about medication used to prevent HIV, responding to a deluge of activists, health experts and government regulators who said the tech giant had created the conditions for a public-health crisis.
What happened
The ads at issue — purchased by pages affiliated with personal-injury lawyers and seen millions of times — linked drugs designed to stop the spread of HIV with severe bone and kidney damage. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates long have said such claims are false, pointing to multiple studies showing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is safe.
After initially declining to disable the ads, Facebook began on Friday retroactively labeling some of them as rule violations in its archive, limiting their visibility.
Facebook spokeswoman Devon Kearns confirmed Sunday that the company had taken action against some of the ads. “After a review, our independent fact-checking partners have determined some of the ads in question mislead people about the effects of Truvada,” she said, referring to one of the drugs used in PrEP. “As a result we have rejected these ads and they can no longer run on Facebook.”
Why it matters
The change in course at Facebook drew praise from LGBT organizations that had worked since September to stop the spread of HIV misinformation on the social media platform. But many activists said they remain uneasy that it took so long to get Facebook’s attention in the first place.
The problem, LGBT advocates argued, is the ads conflated the two ways the drugs are used — either for treatment or prevention of HIV. PrEP, the preventive form is safe, the advocates said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publicly advises PrEP is “highly effective” and “recommended” for people at high risk. Health experts and government regulators also urged Facebook to take down the ads, which they said had already resulted in some patients swearing off the drugs.
Facebook initially told LGBT groups to submit their claims for review by its third-party fact-checkers, explaining the ads otherwise did not violate the company’s rules. That response — followed by a prolonged silence from fact-checkers — infuriated GLAAD and other groups, which banded together to blast Facebook in a public letter.
On Friday the fact-checkers agreed the ads about PrEP were “misleading,” explaining in some cases it “overstates the risks for those who take Truvada as a preventive rather than as a treatment.”
Some of the ads Facebook disabled had already ceased running, and it did not ban all ads about drug-related lawsuits, or HIV prevention medication. The company, says it’s still reviewing ads related to the medication.