A British organisation representing those injured by covid-19 vaccines has expressed concerns that legitimate discussion on social media could be threatened after a BBC investigation triggered Facebook into removing support groups.
On Friday, the BBC reported that in response to one of its stories, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, had removed several vaccine injury support groups, including one which had over 250,000 members. However, members of Vaccine, Injured, Bereaved UK (VIB UK) are worried that they are at risk of being unfairly targeted by censorship on social media as they try to pull together voices and support in regards to covid-19 vaccine damage.
The BBC report looked at Facebook users who were using a carrot emoji to hide “anti-vax content” from the tech giant’s automated moderation tool in groups that it claimed were sharing “unverified claims of people being either injured or killed by vaccines.” Once the BBC alerted Meta, the unnamed groups were removed. “We have removed this group for violating our harmful misinformation policies and will review any other similar content in line with this policy. We continue to work closely with public health experts and the UK government to further tackle covid vaccine misinformation,” Meta told the state broadcaster.