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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

Relevant information:

>"Facebook does not have a policy that bans advertising on the basis that it expresses opposition to vaccines," a Facebook spokesperson said. "Our policy is to ban ads containing vaccine misinformation."

The ad Buzzfeed thinks is in violation:

>One ad reads, “Is the vaccine the best option? And if not, what is?” Another says, “Click below for a FREE guide for Pertussis which will include: Vaccine Controversy.”

Seems pretty cut and dry to me. The ad doesn't contain misinformation, merely opposition. Somehow I can't help but feel like we're sliding down the slippery slope though.

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The ad's destination URL contains the misinformation.

Agencies play this semantic cat and mouse game with policies that are clearly targeted at preventing this type of content from proliferating, so it's not as cut and dry as you believe it is.

The larger picture may not be cut and dry, but this example is. The wording of the policy is very clear, and so is the wording of the ads in question.

No, it's not. An ad's destination page is subject to Facebooks advertising policy:

>During the ad review process, we'll check your ad's images, text, targeting, and positioning, in addition to the content on your ad's landing page. Your ad may not be approved if the landing page content isn't fully functional, doesn't match the product/service promoted in your ad or doesn't fully comply with our Advertising Policies.

https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/

Huh, I didn't know that strictly the same policies applied to both the ad content and the ad destination.

What's your explanation for Facebook leaving up the ad and issuing the statement that they did then? It appears they are standing by their choice on some grounds, and I'm curious what your interpretation of that is.

> Our policy is to ban ads containing vaccine misinformation

Well, ok, so the only ads they ban are ads that say "Vaccines cause autism!". How useful is that as a policy? By the same metric a "Find out the truth about the moon landing!" would contain no false information about the moon landing even though the link is chalk full of it.

Has anyone ever seen or produced an ad that actually runs afoul of this policy? If not, it is a useless policy, they are still aiding the spread of misinformation on a very important health topic.

Facebook does this so often (lip service with no real practical effects) that we can't consider it to be helplessness anymore. A company so routinely ineffective at fixing its mistakes must be lying about actually believing they were mistakes.

The site the ad links to contains the misinformation. It seems like that conforms with FB policy.

> The ad doesn't contain misinformation, merely opposition.

Can you show me a formulation of "vaccine opposition" that does not require misinformation to be credible?

Sure: there's the idea of opposing vaccines because you want the absolute option of bodily autonomy over what gets injected into your bloodstream.

The thing about you deciding what goes into you is that it is harming other people. Your rights stop once you harm others.

That wasn't the point I was making, please don't strawman me. The GP asked for an argument against vaccination that didn't rely on misinformation.

Seriously. The use of the term "opposition" here makes it sound like vaccinations are things people can have subjective opinions about. It's like having a dissenting opinion on 1+1=2 or voicing ones opposition to the sky being being blue and expecting everyone to be cool with that. Except in the case of vaccinations, these dissenters cause people to freaking die, and not just themselves or their own. And their argument is literally never anything more than, "well, y'know, some people are saying vaccinations are bad, I hear. Some of them are even in my family or on TV or go to my church so there must be something to it!"

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