Facebook considers removing anti-vaccination recommendations

When Facebook was first made public, everybody raved about how the social media platform helped them to connect with people. People said it was boon and rightfully so! As the social media platform gained popularity, founder Mark Zuckerberg tried incorporating ways to make it more economically viable. Targeted advertisements and algorithm-based news feed from then on became a norm. A personalised news feed based on the things a user likes seemed like a dream come true. But recent years have had people doubting the algorithm’s credibility.
In recent news, a small but vocal community of parents who reject wisdom about immunisations, often citing junk science or conspiracy theories opted out having them children vaccinated after Facebook`promoted anti-vaccination material to the group. According to reporting from the Daily Beast, Facebook has come under fire for promoting anti-vaccination material, especially ads targeting women in regions with high numbers of measles cases
The outcry intensified after Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wrote a letter to founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg asking how Facebook planned to protect users from misleading material about vaccinations. Schiff sent a similar letter to Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google, which is also under scrutiny about how its search engine and subsidiary YouTube promote potentially dangerous misinformation. The algorithms which power these services are not designed to distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information, and the consequences of that are particularly troubling for public health issues," Schiff wrote to both tech executives.
"While we work hard to remove content that violates our policies, we also give our community tools to control what they see as well as use Facebook to speak up and share perspectives with the community around them," Facebook said in a statement emailed to an American daily.
While these problems may take a long time to rectify, we as users can only be more vigilant and aware of things we read on the internet.