Facebook launches information campaign about COVID-19 vaccine

One year after COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency, the vaccine is now top of mind for millions of Americans hoping to return to normalcy. To support the effective delivery of the vaccine, Facebook is launching the largest worldwide campaign to promote accurate information about the COVID vaccine by providing insights on vaccine attitudes, helping people find where they can get vaccinated, funding vaccine information campaigns and removing misinformation on the platform.

Vaccine Attitude Insights
Facebook’s Data for Good program is providing new insights on vaccine attitudes in order to guide the distribution of the vaccine and increase immunization rates. The symptom survey project, created by Carnegie Mellon University and has received over 50 million responses to date, has been expanded to understand which geographic areas are the most reluctant to receive the vaccine and could hold us back from reaching herd immunity.

For example, in California, the vaccine is currently only available to healthcare workers, those over 65, and anyone else eligible in the “phase 1B, tier 1” category. The map shows, however, that 88% of Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Alameda County residents and 91% of San Francisco County residents would choose to receive a COVID vaccine if it were offered to them today.

The interactive CMU map for the entire State of California (and county-by-county data) can be found here.

Vaccine Distribution & Information
Similar to its efforts around voter registration last year, Facebook will feature links in the COVID-19 Information Center to local health websites to help people understand whether they’re eligible to get vaccinated and how to do so, making it easier for people to see where and when they can get vaccinated in just a few taps.

Funding Vaccine Information Campaigns
Facebook is also announcing $120 million in advertising credits to health ministries and agencies around the world, as well as training and marketing support to help governments and health organizations move quickly and reach the right people with the latest vaccine information. Each state is eligible to use these ad credits and California has already utilized ad credits to share information with their residents.

Vaccine Misinformation
Facebook is taking important additional steps to stop the spread of misinformation about vaccines, including:

• Removing vaccine mis-information posts that are widely debunked hoaxes and removing additional false, harmful claims about COVID-19.
• Removing more Facebook Pages and Groups and Instagram accounts that repeatedly share false COVID-19 conspiracy theories and other false vaccine claims.
• Turning on Mandatory Post Approval (MPA) for Groups with admins or members who have violated our COVID-19 policies.