Facebook says it sees signs that COVID vaccine hesitancy is declining – Axios

Facebook said Wednesday it’s seeing signs that resistance to the COVID-19 vaccine is weakening both in the United States and abroad, though it acknowledged it still doesn’t have hard numbers on how frequently misinformation is being shared on its platforms.Why it matters: Facebook touts a survey showing improved attitudes toward the vaccines, but that survey finding raises questions, as other polling has shown significant and entrenched hesitancy, especially in the U.S. It also doesn’t show that Facebook or other social media can be credited for the shift. When it comes to the spread of hate speech, child exploitation and other types of problematic content, Facebook says the key metric is prevalence — that is, how often such content is shown — and points to declines in such information appearing on its site. Hate speech, for example, represents just five posts in 10,000.However, Facebook said it doesn’t yet have data to share when it comes to COVID-19 misinformation.Instead, Facebook points to other statistics, such as how many times people viewed authoritative content about the vaccine, or how many users posted a profile picture frame highlighting their vaccination status.The company acknowledged that anti-vaccine information is often less overt than changing a profile…
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