Ապատեղեկատվություն

Քաղաքականության մանրամասները
Օգտատիրոջ գործառնություններ

Քաղաքականության մանրամասները

ՓՈՓՈԽՈՒԹՅՈՒՆՆԵՐԻ ՄԱՏՅԱՆ
Քաղաքականության հիմնավորում
Ապատեղեկատվությունը տարբերվում է մեր Համայնքի ստանդարտներում նշված խոսքի այլ տեսակներից, քանի որ չկա արգելված արտահայտությունների համապարփակ ցանկ ձևակերպելու միջոց: Օրինակ՝ բացահայտ բռնության կամ ատելության խոսքի դեպքում մեր քաղաքականությունները սահմանում են այն խոսքը, որը մենք արգելում ենք, և նույնիսկ այն անձինք, ովքեր համաձայն չեն այդ քաղաքականության հետ, կարող են հետևել դրանց: Ապատեղեկատվության դեպքում, սակայն, նման սահմանում չենք կարող ապահովել։ Աշխարհն անընդհատ փոփոխվում է, և այն, ինչ ճիշտ է տվյալ րոպեին, կարող է ճիշտ չլինել հաջորդ րոպեին: Մարդիկ ունեն նաև տեղեկությունների տարբեր մակարդակներ իրենց շրջապատող աշխարհի մասին և կարող են հավատալ, որ ինչ-որ բան ճիշտ է, երբ դա այդպես չէ: Քաղաքականությունը, որն ուղղակի արգելում է «ապատեղեկատվությունը», օգտակար ծանուցում չի տրամադրի մեր ծառայություններից օգտվող մարդկանց և չի կիրառվի, քանի որ մենք չունենք տեղեկությունների կատարյալ հասանելիություն:
Փոխարենը, մեր քաղաքականությունները ձևակերպում են ապատեղեկատվության տարբեր կատեգորիաներ և փորձում են հստակ ուղեցույց տալ, թե ինչպես ենք մենք վերաբերվում այդ ելույթին, երբ տեսնում ենք այն: Յուրաքանչյուր կատեգորիայի համար մեր մոտեցումն արտացոլում է արտահայտման, անվտանգության, արժանապատվության, իսկության և գաղտնիության արժեքները հավասարակշռելու մեր փորձը:
Մենք հեռացնում ենք ապատեղեկատվությունը, որտեղ այն, ամենայն հավանականությամբ, ուղղակիորեն նպաստում է անմիջական ֆիզիկական վնասի ռիսկին: Մենք նաև հեռացնում ենք կոնտենտը, որը, ամենայն հավանականությամբ, ուղղակիորեն նպաստում է քաղաքական գործընթացների աշխատանքին միջամտելուն: Որոշելով, թե որն է ապատեղեկատվությունն այս կատեգորիաներում՝ մենք համագործակցում ենք անկախ փորձագետների հետ, ովքեր ունեն գիտելիքներ և փորձ՝ գնահատելու կոնտենտի ճշմարտացիությունը և որոշելու, թե արդյոք այն կարող է ուղղակիորեն նպաստել մոտալուտ վնասի ռիսկին: Սա ներառում է, օրինակ, համագործակցություն իրավապաշտպան կազմակերպությունների հետ, որոնք գտնվում են երկրի տարածքում՝ պարզելու քաղաքացիական հակամարտության մասին լուրերի իսկությունը:
Ապատեղեկատվության մնացած բոլոր դեպքերում մենք կենտրոնանում ենք դրա տարածվածությունը նվազեցնելու կամ արդյունավետ երկխոսություն խթանող միջավայր ստեղծելու վրա: Մենք գիտենք, որ մարդիկ հաճախ ապատեղեկատվությունն օգտագործում են անվնաս ձևերով, օրինակ՝ մի բան ուռճացնելու համար («Այս թիմն ունի ամենավատ ցուցանիշը սպորտի պատմության մեջ») կամ հումորի կամ երգիծանքի մեջ («Ամուսինս հենց նոր ճանաչվել է տարվա ամուսին»): Նրանք կարող են նաև կիսվել իրենց գործառությամբ անճշտություններ պարունակող պատմությունների միջոցով: Որոշ դեպքերում մարդիկ կիսվում են խորն անձնական կարծիքներով, որոնք մյուսները կեղծ են համարում կամ կիսվում են տեղեկություններով, որոնք իրենց կարծիքով ճշմարիտ են, իսկ մյուսների համար՝ թերի կամ մոլորեցնող:
Հասկանալով, թե որքան տարածված է նման ելույթը, մենք կենտրոնանում ենք օգտատերերին օգտակար տեղեկություններ տրամադրելու վրա, երբ առկա է հնարավոր մոլորեցնող կամ շփոթեցնող կոնտենտ: Որպես այդ ջանքերի մի մաս՝ Միացյալ Նահանգներից դուրս մենք համագործակցում ենք երրորդ կողմի փաստերի ստուգման կազմակերպությունների հետ աշխարհի շատ մասերում՝ մեր հարթակներում ամենավիրուսային կոնտենտի ճշգրտությունը ստուգելու և գնահատելու համար (տեսեք այստեղ և այստեղ ՝ Միացյալ Նահանգներում մեր մոտեցմանը ծանոթանալու համար): Սկսած Միացյալ Նահանգներից՝ Համայնքի նշումների ծրագիրը մարդկանց հնարավորություն է տալիս ավելի շատ համատեքստ ավելացնել Facebook-ի, Instagram-ի և Threads-ի գրառումներին, որոնք հնարավոր մոլորեցնող կամ շփոթեցնող են (տե՛ս այստեղ): Մենք նաև ռեսուրսներ ենք տրամադրում մեդիա և թվային գրագիտությունը բարձրացնելու համար, որպեսզի մարդիկ կարողանան որոշել, թե ինչ կարդալ, ինչին վստահել և ինչով կիսվել: Մենք մարդկանցից պահանջում ենք բացահայտել՝ օգտագործելով մեր ԱԲ-բացահայտման գործիքը, երբ նրանք տեղադրում են օրգանական կոնտենտ ֆոտոռեալիստական տեսանյութով կամ իրատեսական ձայնով աուդիոյով, որը ստեղծվել կամ փոփոխվել է թվայնորեն, և մենք կարող ենք տուգանքներ կիրառել, եթե նրանք դա չանեն: Մենք կարող ենք նաև պիտակ ավելացնել թվային եղանակով ստեղծված կամ փոփոխված որոշակի կոնտենտում, որը մարդկանց մոլորության մեջ գցելու հատկապես բարձր ռիսկ է ստեղծում հանրային կարևորության որևէ հարցում:
Վերջապես, մենք արգելում ենք կոնտենտը և վարքագիծն այլ ոլորտներում, որոնք հաճախ համընկնում են ապատեղեկատվության տարածման հետ: Օրինակ, մեր Համայնքի ստանդարտներն արգելում են կեղծ հաշիվները, խարդախությունը և համակարգված ոչ իրական վարքագիծը:
Քանի որ առցանց և անցանց միջավայրերը փոփոխվում և զարգանում են, մենք կշարունակենք մշակել այս քաղաքականությունները: Հաշիվները, որոնք բազմիցս հրապարակում են ստորև թվարկված ապատեղեկատվությունը, կարող են, բացի սույն քաղաքականության համաձայն իրենց կոնտենտը կիրառելուց, ունենալ բաշխման նվազում, գովազդելու իրենց կարողության սահմանափակումներ կամ կարող են հեռացվել մեր հարթակներից: Լրացուցիչ տեղեկություններ այն մասին, թե ինչ է տեղի ունենում, երբ Meta-ն հեռացնում է կոնտենտը, կարող եք գտնել այստեղ:
Ուղեցույցներ
Ապատեղեկատվություն, որը մենք հեռացնում ենք.
Մենք հեռացնում ենք ապատեղեկատվության հետևյալ տեսակները.
I. Ֆիզիկական վնաս կամ բռնություն
Մենք հեռացնում ենք ապատեղեկատվությունը կամ չհաստատված լուրերը, որոնք, փորձագետների կարծիքով, կարող են ուղղակիորեն նպաստել անմիջական բռնության կամ մարդկանց ֆիզիկական վնաս պատճառելու ռիսկին: Մենք ապատեղեկատվությունը սահմանում ենք որպես հեղինակավոր երրորդ կողմի կողմից կեղծված պնդումների կոնտենտ: Մենք սահմանում ենք չստուգվող ասեկոսեն որպես պնդում, որի աղբյուրը հաստատված է փորձագետ գործընկերների կողմից, որ չափազանց դժվար է կամ անհնար է գտնել, որի համար բացակայում են հեղինակավոր աղբյուրները, որոնց համար բավարար ճշգրտություն չկա տվյալ պնդման իսկությունը բացահայտելու համար, կամ որի վերաբերյալ պնդումը չափազանց անհավատալի է կամ չափազանց անտրամաբանական է հավատալու համար:
Մենք գիտենք, որ երբեմն ապատեղեկատվությունը, որը կարող է սովորական թվալ, որոշակի համատեքստում կարող է նպաստել անցանց վնասի վտանգի առաջացմանը, ներառյալ՝ բռնության սպառնալիքները, որոնք կարող են նպաստել մահվան, լուրջ վնասվածքների կամ այլ ֆիզիկական վնասվածքների ռիսկի բարձրացմանը: Մենք աշխատում ենք հասարակական կազմակերպությունների (ՀԿ-ների), ոչ առևտրային կազմակերպությունների, հումանիտար կազմակերպությունների և միջազգային կազմակերպությունների հետ, որոնք ունեն փորձ այս տեղական դինամիկայում:
Հասարակական բռնության բարձր ռիսկ ունեցող երկրներում մենք ակտիվորեն աշխատում ենք տեղի գործընկերների հետ՝ հասկանալու, թե որ կեղծ պնդումները կարող են ուղղակիորեն նպաստել անմիջական ֆիզիկական վնասի վտանգի առաջացմանը: Այնուհետև մենք աշխատում ենք բացահայտել և հեռացնել կոնտենտը, որը ներկայացնում է այդպիսի պնդումներ մեր հարթակում: Օրինակ՝ տեղի փորձագետների հետ խորհրդակցելով՝ մենք կարող ենք հեռացնել համատեքստից դուրս գտնվող մեդիաֆայլերը, որոնք կեղծ պնդում են, թե պատկերում են բռնության ակտեր, բռնության զոհեր կամ կատարողներ, զենքեր կամ ռազմական տեխնիկա:
II. Առողջապահության վերաբերյալ վնասակար ապատեղեկատվություն
Մենք խորհրդակցում ենք առաջատար առողջապահական կազմակերպությունների հետ՝ բացահայտելու առողջապահական ոլորտի ապատեղեկատվությունը, որը կարող է ուղղակիորեն նպաստել հանրային առողջությանը և անվտանգությանն անմիջական վնաս հասցնելուն: Առողջապահական ոլորտի վնասակար ապատեղեկատվությունը, որը մենք հեռացնում ենք, ներառում է հետևյալը․
  • Պատվաստանյութերի մասին ապատեղեկատվություն: Մենք հեռացնում ենք ապատեղեկատվությունը հիմնականում պատվաստանյութերի մասին, երբ հանրային առողջապահության մարմինները եզրակացնում են, որ տեղեկությունը կեղծ է և, ամենայն հավանականությամբ, ուղղակիորեն նպաստում է պատվաստանյութի մոտալուտ մերժմանը: Դրանք ներառում են՝
    • Պատվաստումներն առաջացնում են աուտիզմ (Օրինակ՝ «Պատվաստումների ավելացումն է պատճառը, որ այս օրերին այդքան շատ երեխաներ ունեն աուտիզմ»:)
    • Պատվաստանյութերն առաջացնում են մանկական հանկարծամահության համախտանիշ (ՄՀՄՀ) (օրինակ՝ «Դուք չգիտե՞ք, որ պատվաստանյութերն առաջացնում են ՄՀՄՀ»):
    • Պատվաստանյութերն առաջացնում են այն հիվանդությունը, որից նրանք պետք է պաշտպանեն, կամ պատճառ են դառնում, որ պատվաստանյութ ստացող անձի հիվանդանալն ավելի հավանական դառնա (Օրինակ` «Պատվաստանյութի ընդունումն իրականում մեծացնում է Ձեր հիվանդանալու հավանականությունը, քանի որ ներսում հիվանդության շտամ կա: Զգուշացեք:»)
    • Պատվաստանյութերը կամ դրանց բաղադրիչները մահացու են, թունավոր, վնասակար կամ վտանգավոր (Օրինակ՝ «Իհարկե, Դուք կարող եք պատվաստանյութեր ընդունել, եթե դեմ չեք թույնը Ձեր մարմնում լցնելուն»:
    • Բնական վարակամերժությունն ավելի անվտանգ է, քան պատվաստանյութով ձեռք բերված վարակամերժությունը (Օրինակ՝ «Ամենաանվտանգ տարբերակը պարզապես հիվանդանալն է, այլ ոչ թե պատվաստվելը»:)
    • Վտանգավոր է կարճ ժամանակահատվածում մի քանի պատվաստանյութ ստանալը, նույնիսկ եթե այդ ժամկետը բժշկության կողմից է առաջարկվում (Օրինակ՝ «Երբեք մի՛ ընդունեք մեկից ավելի պատվաստանյութ միաժամանակ, դա վտանգավոր է։ Ինձ չի հետաքրքրում, թե ինչ է Ձեզ ասում Ձեր բժիշկը»:)
    • Պատվաստանյութերն արդյունավետ չեն կանխարգելելու այն հիվանդությունը, որից դրանք մտադիր են պաշտպանել: Այնուամենայնիվ, COVID-19-ի, գրիպի և մալարիայի դեմ պատվաստանյութերի համար մենք չենք հեռացնում այն պնդումները, որ այդ պատվաստանյութերն արդյունավետ չեն՝ կանխելու որևէ մեկի համար այդ վիրուսներով վարակվելը։ (Օրինակներ․ Հեռացնել՝ «Պոլիոմիելիտի պատվաստանյութը Ձեզ չի պաշտպանում հիվանդությունից», Հեռացնել՝ «Պատվաստանյութերն իրականում ոչինչ չեն անում, որ պաշտպանեն Ձեզ հիվանդությունից», Թույլատրել՝ «Պատվաստանյութը չի կանխում Ձեր COVID-19-ով հիվանդանալը, այդ իսկ պատճառով Դուք դեռ պետք է սոցիալական հեռավորություն պահպանեք և դիմակ կրեք, երբ ուրիշ անձանց շրջապատում եք»:)
    • Կարմրուկով վարակվելը չի կարող մահվան պատճառ դառնալ (պահանջում է լրացուցիչ տեղեկություններ և/կամ համատեքստ) (Օրինակ՝ «Մի՛ անհանգստացեք, երբ հիվանդանում եք կարմրուկով, այն չի կարող մահացու լինել»:
    • Վիտամին C-ն նույնքան արդյունավետ է, որքան պատվաստանյութերը՝ կանխելու այն հիվանդությունները, որոնց համար պատվաստանյութեր կան:
  • Առողջության մասին ապատեղեկատվություն հանրային առողջության արտակարգ իրավիճակների ժամանակ: Մենք հեռացնում ենք ապատեղեկատվությունը հանրային առողջության արտակարգ իրավիճակների ժամանակ, երբ հանրային առողջապահության մարմինները եզրակացնում են, որ տեղեկությունը կեղծ է և, ամենայն հավանականությամբ, ուղղակիորեն նպաստում է մոտալուտ ֆիզիկական վնասի ռիսկին, այդ թվում՝ նպաստելով անհատների կողմից վնասակար հիվանդություն ստանալու կամ տարածելու կամ հարակից պատվաստանյութից հրաժարվելու ռիսկին: Մենք բացահայտում ենք հանրային առողջության արտակարգ իրավիճակները՝ համագործակցելով համաշխարհային և տեղական առողջապահական իշխանությունների հետ:
  • Առողջական խնդիրների համար վնասակար հրաշք-բուժումների գովազդում կամ քարոզում: Դրանք ներառում են բուժում, որտեղ առաջարկվող կիրառումը, առողջապահական համատեքստում, ամենայն հավանականությամբ անմիջականորեն նպաստում է լուրջ վնասվածքի կամ մահվան ռիսկի, և բուժումը չունի օրինական առողջապահական կիրառություն (օրինակ՝ սպիտակեցնող միջոց, ախտահանիչ, սև լուծույթ, կաուստիկ սոդա):
III․ Ընտրողների կամ մարդահամարի միջամտություն
Ընտրությունների և մարդահամարի ամբողջականությունը գովազդելու համար մենք հեռացնում ենք ապատեղեկատվությունը, որը, ամենայն հավանականությամբ, ուղղակիորեն նպաստում է այդ գործընթացներին մարդկանց մասնակցելու հնարավորությանը միջամտելու ռիսկին: Սա ներառում է հետևյալը.
  • Ապատեղեկատվություն քվեարկության, ընտրողների գրանցման կամ մարդահամարի մասնակցության ամսաթվերի, տեղադրությունների, ժամերի և եղանակների մասին:
  • Ապատեղեկատվություն այն մասին, թե ով կարող է քվեարկել, որոնք են քվեարկելու որակավորումները, արդյոք ձայնը հաշվվելու է, և ինչ տեղեկություններ կամ նյութեր պետք է տրամադրվեն քվեարկելու համար։
  • Ապատեղեկատվություն թեկնածու առաջադրվելու կամ չառաջադրվելու վերաբերյալ.
  • Ապատեղեկատվություն այն մասին, թե ով կարող է մասնակցել մարդահամարին և ինչ տեղեկություններ կամ նյութեր պետք է տրամադրել մասնակցելու համար։
  • Ապատեղեկատվություն մարդահամարում կառավարության մասնակցության մասին, ներառյալ, ըստ անհրաժեշտության, այն հանգամանքը, որ անհատի մարդահամարի տվյալները կփոխանցվեն մեկ այլ (մարդահամարի հետ կապ չունեցող) պետական գերատեսչության:
  • Կեղծ կամ չստուգված պնդումներ, որ ԱՄՆ ներգաղթի և մաքսային մարմինը (ICE) գտնվում է քվեարկության վայրում:
  • Բացահայտ կեղծ պնդումներ, որ մարդիկ կվարակվեն COVID-19-ով (կամ այլ վարակիչ հիվանդությամբ), եթե մասնակցեն քվեարկության գործընթացին։
  • Կեղծ պնդումներ ԱՄՆ քվեարկության վայրում առկա պայմանների մասին, որոնք անհնարին կդարձնեն քվեարկությունը, ինչպես հաստատվել է ընտրական մարմնի կողմից:
Մենք ունենք լրացուցիչ քաղաքականություններ, որոնք նախատեսված են բռնության, անօրինական մասնակցության խթանման և ընտրություններին համակարգված միջամտության կոչերն ընդգրկելու համար, որոնք ներկայացված են մեր Համայնքի ստանդարտների այլ բաժիններում:
Հետևյալ կոնտենտի համար մենք ներառում ենք տեղեկատվական պիտակ.
Նենգափոխված մեդիա
Մեդիան կարող է խմբագրվել տարբեր ձևերով: Շատ դեպքերում այս փոփոխությունները սովորական են, օրինակ՝ կոնտենտը կրճատվում կամ կրճատվել է գեղարվեստական պատճառներով կամ երաժշտություն է ավելացվում: Այլ դեպքերում նենգափոխումներն ակնհայտ չեն և կարող են մոլորեցնել:
  • Թվային եղանակով ստեղծված կամ փոփոխված կոնտենտ, որը կարող է մոլորեցնել Այն կոնտենտի համար, որն այլ կերպ չի խախտում Համայնքի ստանդարտները, մենք կարող ենք տեղեկատվական պիտակ տեղադրել կոնտենտի առաջին էջում կամ մերժել որպես գովազդ ներկայացված կոնտենտը, երբ կոնտենտը ֆոտոռեալիստական նկար է կամ տեսանյութ, կամ իրատեսական ձայնային աուդիո, որը թվային եղանակով ստեղծվել կամ փոփոխվել է և ստեղծում է հանրությանը նյութականորեն խաբելու հատկապես բարձր ռիսկ հանրային կարևորության որևէ հարցում:
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hateful conductspeech, for instance, our policies specify the contentspeech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on providingslowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users with helpfulto authoritative information when there is potentially misleading or confusing content. As part of that effort, outside of the United States we partner with third-party fact checking organizations in many parts of the world to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here and here for our approach in the United States). Beginning in the United States, the Community Notes program lets people add more context to Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts that are potentially misleading or confusing (see here). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content enforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Meta removes content can be found here.
Guidelines
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead.
  • Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead. For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, outside of the United States we partner with third-party fact checking organizations in many parts of the world to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here and here for our approach in the United States). Beginning in the United States, the Community Notes program lets people add more context to Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts that are potentially misleading or confusing (see here). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content enforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Meta removes content can be found here.
Guidelines
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead.
  • Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead. For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations in many parts of the world to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see hereto learn more about how our fact-checking program works)and here for our approach in the United States). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content enforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Meta removes content can be found here.
Guidelines
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead.
  • Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead. For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict, and partnering with health organizations during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Pages, Groups, Profiles, and Instagram accountsAccounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content removedenforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when FacebookMeta removes content can be found here.
Guidelines
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead.
  • Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead. For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes and certain highly deceptive manipulated media. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict, and partnering with health organizations during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Pages, Groups, Profiles, and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content removed, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Facebook removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead.
  • Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead. For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes and certain highly deceptive manipulated media. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict, and partnering with health organizations during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so.We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Pages, Groups, Profiles, and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content removed, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Facebook removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities. This currently includes certain false claims related to COVID-19 in countries still experiencing a publicly announced state of emergency regarding the virus. Click here for a complete set of rules regarding what misinformation we do not allow regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead
For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes and certain highly deceptive manipulated media. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict, and partnering with health organizations during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so.We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Pages, Groups, Profiles, and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content removed, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Facebook removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities. This currently includes certain false claims related to COVID-19 in countries still experiencing a publicly announced state of emergency regarding the virus. Click here for a complete set of rules regarding what misinformation we do not allow regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead
For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes and certain highly deceptive manipulated media. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict, and partnering with health organizations during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Pages, Groups, Profiles, and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content removed, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Facebook removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities. This currently includes certain false claims related to COVID-19 in countries still experiencing a publicly announced state of emergency regarding the virus. Click here for a complete set of rules regarding what misinformation we do not allow regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • False or unverified claims that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
For the following content, we include an informative label:
Content Digitally Created or Altered that May Mislead
For content that does not otherwise violate the Community Standards, we may place an informative label on the face of content – or reject content submitted as an advertisement – when the content is a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered and creates a particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of public importance.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content enforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Meta removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities. This currently includes certain false claims related to COVID-19 in countries still experiencing a publicly announced state of emergency regarding the virus. Click here for a complete set of rules regarding what misinformation we do not allow regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • Content falsely claimingFalse or unverified claimsthat the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
  • False claims about current conditions at a U.S. voting location that would make it impossible to vote, as verified by an election authority.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content enforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Meta removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
In countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we work proactively with local partners to understand which false claims may directly contribute to a risk of imminent physical harm. We then work to identify and remove content making those claims on our platform. For example, in consultation with local experts, we may remove out-of-context media falsely claiming to depict acts of violence, victims or perpetrators of violence, weapons, or military hardware.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities. This currently includes certain false claims related to COVID-19 in countries still experiencing a publicly announced state of emergency regarding the virus. Click here for a complete set of rules regarding what misinformation we do not allow regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • Content falsely claiming that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
To provide transparency that in countries experiencing a heightened risk of societal violence, we identify and remove content making harmful misinformation claims.
Policy Rationale
Misinformation is different from other types of speech addressed in our Community Standards because there is no way to articulate a comprehensive list of what is prohibited. With graphic violence or hate speech, for instance, our policies specify the speech we prohibit, and even persons who disagree with those policies can follow them. With misinformation, however, we cannot provide such a line. The world is changing constantly, and what is true one minute may not be true the next minute. People also have different levels of information about the world around them, and may believe something is true when it is not. A policy that simply prohibits “misinformation” would not provide useful notice to the people who use our services and would be unenforceable, as we don’t have perfect access to information.
Instead, our policies articulate different categories of misinformation and try to provide clear guidance about how we treat that speech when we see it. For each category, our approach reflects our attempt to balance our values of expression, safety, dignity, authenticity, and privacy.
We remove misinformation where it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm. We also remove content that is likely to directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes. In determining what constitutes misinformation in these categories, we partner with independent experts who possess knowledge and expertise to assess the truth of the content and whether it is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent harm. This includes, for instance, partnering with human rights organizations with a presence on the ground in a country to determine the truth of a rumor about civil conflict.
For all other misinformation, we focus on reducing its prevalence or creating an environment that fosters a productive dialogue. We know that people often use misinformation in harmless ways, such as to exaggerate a point (“This team has the worst record in the history of the sport!”) or in humor or satire (“My husband just won Husband of the Year.”) They also may share their experience through stories that contain inaccuracies. In some cases, people share deeply-held personal opinions that others consider false or share information that they believe to be true but others consider incomplete or misleading.
Recognizing how common such speech is, we focus on slowing the spread of hoaxes and viral misinformation, and directing users to authoritative information. As part of that effort, we partner with third-party fact checking organizations to review and rate the accuracy of the most viral content on our platforms (see here to learn more about how our fact-checking program works). We also provide resources to increase media and digital literacy so people can decide what to read, trust, and share themselves. We require people to disclose, using our AI-disclosure tool, whenever they post organic content with photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered, and we may apply penalties if they fail to do so. We may also add a label to certain digitally created or altered content that creates a particularly high risk of misleading people on a matter of public importance.
Finally, we prohibit content and behavior in other areas that often overlap with the spread of misinformation. For example, our Community Standards prohibit fake accounts, fraud, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
As online and offline environments change and evolve, we will continue to evolve these policies. Accounts that repeatedly share the misinformation listed below may, in addition to having their content enforced on in accordance with this policy, receive decreased distribution, limitations on their ability to advertise, or be removed from our platforms. Additional information on what happens when Meta removes content can be found here.
Misinformation we remove:
We remove the following types of misinformation:
I. Physical Harm or Violence
We remove misinformation or unverifiable rumors that expert partners have determined are likely to directly contribute to a risk of imminent violence or physical harm to people. We define misinformation as content with a claim that is determined to be false by an authoritative third party. We define an unverifiable rumor as a claim whose source expert partners confirm is extremely hard or impossible to trace, for which authoritative sources are absent, where there is not enough specificity for the claim to be debunked, or where the claim is too incredulous or too irrational to be believed.
We know that sometimes misinformation that might appear benign could, in a specific context, contribute to a risk of offline harm, including threats of violence that could contribute to a heightened risk of death, serious injury, or other physical harm. We work with a global network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not-for-profit organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international organizations that have expertise in these local dynamics.
II. Harmful Health Misinformation
We consult with leading health organizations to identify health misinformation likely to directly contribute to imminent harm to public health and safety. The harmful health misinformation that we remove includes the following:
  • Misinformation about vaccines. We remove misinformation primarily about vaccines when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to imminent vaccine refusals. They include:
    • Vaccines cause autism (Ex: “Increased vaccinations are why so many kids have autism these days.”)
    • Vaccines cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Ex: “Don’t you know vaccines cause SIDS?”
    • Vaccines cause the disease against which they are meant to protect, or cause the person receiving the vaccine to be more likely to get the disease (Ex: “Taking a vaccine actually makes you more likely to get the disease since there’s a strain of the disease inside. Beware!”)
    • Vaccines or their ingredients are deadly, toxic, poisonous, harmful, or dangerous (Ex: “Sure, you can take vaccines, if you don’t mind putting poison in your body.”)
    • Natural immunity is safer than vaccine-acquired immunity (Ex: “It’s safest to just get the disease rather than the vaccine.”)
    • It is dangerous to get several vaccines in a short period of time, even if that timing is medically recommended (Ex: “Never take more than one vaccine at the same time, that is dangerous - I don’t care what your doctor tells you!”)
    • Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease against which they purport to protect. However, for the COVID-19, flu, and malaria vaccines, we do not remove claims that those vaccines are not effective in preventing someone from contracting those viruses. (Ex’s: Remove – “The polio vaccine doesn’t do anything to stop you from getting the disease”; Remove – “Vaccines actually don’t do anything to stop you from getting diseases”; Allow – “The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting COVID-19, that’s why you still need to socially distance and wear a mask when you’re around others.”)
    • Acquiring measles cannot cause death (requires additional information and/or context) (Ex: “Don’t worry about whether you get measles, it can’t be fatal.”)
    • Vitamin C is as effective as vaccines in preventing diseases for which vaccines exist.
  • Misinformation about health during public health emergencies. We remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine. We identify public health emergencies in partnership with global and local health authorities. This currently includes certain false claims related to COVID-19 in countries still experiencing a publicly announced state of emergency regarding the virus.This currently includes false claims related to COVID-19 that are verified by expert health authorities, about the existence or severity of the virus, how to cure or prevent it, how the virus is transmitted or who is immune, and false claims which discourage good health practices related to COVID-19 (such as getting tested, social distancing, wearing a face mask, and getting a vaccine for COVID-19).Click here for a complete set of rules regarding what misinformation we do not allow regarding COVID-19 and vaccines.
  • Promoting or advocating for harmful miracle cures for health issues. These include treatments where the recommended application, in a health context, is likely to directly contribute to the risk of serious injury or death, and the treatment has no legitimate health use (ex: bleach, disinfectant, black salve, caustic soda).
III. Voter or Census Interference
In an effort to promote election and census integrity, we remove misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to a risk of interference with people’s ability to participate in those processes. This includes the following:
  • Misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation.
  • Misinformation about who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information or materials must be provided in order to vote.
  • Misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not.
  • Misinformation about who can participate in the census and what information or materials must be provided in order to participate.
  • Misinformation about government involvement in the census, including, where applicable, that an individual's census information will be shared with another (non-census) government agency.
  • Content falsely claiming that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is at a voting location.
  • Explicit false claims that people will be infected by COVID-19 (or another communicable disease) if they participate in the voting process.
We have additional policies intended to cover calls for violence, the promotion of illegal participation, and calls for coordinated interference in elections, which are represented in other sections of our Community Standards.
IV. Manipulated Media
Media can be edited in a variety of ways. In many cases, these changes are benign, such as content being cropped or shortened for artistic reasons or music being added. In other cases, the manipulation is not apparent and could mislead, particularly in the case of video content. We remove this content because it can go viral quickly and experts advise that false beliefs regarding manipulated media often cannot be corrected through further discourse.
We remove videos under this policy if specific criteria are met: (1) the video has been edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe a subject of the video said words that they did not say; and (2) the video is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning, including deep learning techniques (e.g., a technical deepfake), that merges, combines, replaces, and/or superimposes content onto a video, creating a video that appears authentic.
Օգտատիրոջ գործառնություններ
Տեսեք որոշ օրինակներ, թե ինչ տեսք ունի ստանդարտների կիրառումը Facebook-ի մարդկանց համար, օրինակ՝ ինչ տեսք ունի, երբ հաղորդում եք մի բանի մասին, որը, ըստ Ձեզ, չպետք է լինի Facebook-ում, երբ Ձեզ ասում են, որ Դուք խախտել եք մեր Համայնքի ստանդարտները և երբ տեսնում եք նախազգուշացնող էկրան որոշակի կոնտենտի համար։
Նշում. Մենք միշտ կատարելագործում ենք մեր ծառայությունները, ուստի այն, ինչ Դուք տեսնում եք այստեղ, կարող է մի փոքր հնացած լինել՝ համեմատած այն ամենի հետ, ինչ մենք ներկայումս օգտագործում ենք:
ՕԳՏԱՏԻՐՈՋ ԳՈՐԾԱՌՆՈՒԹՅՈՒՆ
Հաղորդում
ՕԳՏԱՏԻՐՈՋ ԳՈՐԾԱՌՈՒԹՅՈՒՆ
Հաղորդմանը հաջորդող հաղորդակցություն
ՕԳՏԱՏԻՐՈՋ ԳՈՐԾԱՌՈՒԹՅՈՒՆ
Հեռացման գործողություններ
ՕԳՏԱՏԻՐՈՋ ԳՈՐԾԱՌՈՒԹՅՈՒՆ
Նախազգուշացնող էկրաններ
Ստանդարտների կիրառում
Մեր քաղաքականությունը նույնն է ամբողջ աշխարհում բոլորի համար Facebook-ում:
Ստուգող թիմեր
Ավելի քան 15000 ստուգողներից բաղկացած մեր համաշխարհային թիմն ամեն օր աշխատում է Facebook-ում մարդկանց անվտանգ պահելու համար:
Շահագրգիռ կողմերի ներգրավվածությունը
Արտաքին փորձագետները, գիտնականները, ՀԿ-ները և քաղաքականություն մշակողները օգնում են տեղեկացնել Facebook-ի Համայնքի ստանդարտների մասին:
Ստացեք օգնություն ապատեղեկատվության վերաբերյալ
Իմացեք, թե ինչ կարող եք անել, եթե Facebook-ում տեսնեք ինչ-որ բան, որը հակասում է մեր Համայնքի ստանդարտներին:
Այցելեք մեր Օգնության կենտրոն