False vaccine claims persist on Facebook, despite a ban. Here's why

In the early days of the pandemic, a  Facebook page for Earthley promised an easy way to avoid getting COVID-19. The wellness company promoted a Vitamin D cream and an elderberry elixir to strengthen the body’s immune response and “help fight off the possibility of you or your family getting the coronavirus.”  The post appeared to violate Facebook’s policy for false claims of coronavirus treatments and cures. It was serious enough that the Federal Trade Commission mentioned it in a warning letter amid the agency’s crackdown on coronavirus scams.  Nearly one year later, Earthley is still spreading false information about COVID-19 and the vaccines — despite Facebook’s new rules against that content. The page has published out-of-context news stories about vaccine side effects and skirted moderation by misspelling the word “vaccine” in posts questioning whether vaccination is safe. We reached out to Earthley for a comment, but we haven’t heard back. “It doesn’t take an advanced, opaque algorithm like Facebook likes to use to predict this behavior,” said John Gregory, deputy health editor at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation. “The pages we’ve seen spreading these myths … they are pages that have been spreading health misinformation in most…
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