Facebook ‘still making money from anti-vax sites’

Facebook is allowing users to profit from the spread of potentially dangerous false theories and misinformation about the pandemic and vaccines, including deploying money-raising tools on pages with content flagged up by the social media giant’s own factcheckers.  An investigation has found 430 pages followed by 45 million people using Facebook’s tools, including virtual “shops” and fan subscriptions, while spreading false information about Covid-19 or vaccinations.  The findings come despite a promise the platform made last year that no user or company should directly profit from false information about immunisation against Covid-19.  Facebook generally does not share this income, but it does occasionally take a cut, and benefits financially from users engaging with content and staying on its services, exposing them to more ads.  Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, headquartered in London, has revealed that it may have uncovered a small snapshot of Facebook providing a large amount of financial misinformation about the epidemic and vaccines.  A Facebook spokesman said the agency was investigating the alleged incidents and had “removed a few pages shared with us for violating our policy”.  However, many of the posts identified as misinformation do not violate Facebook’s rules, the spokesman said without elaborating.