Facebook Temporarily Bans Ads Selling Medical Face Masks

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Facebook has announced it is temporarily banning ads and commerce listings that are selling medical face masks.

In an effort to prevent exploitation of its platform by those who intend to take advantage of Coronavirus fears to sell medical face masks, Facebook has announced a temporary ban on related ads and commerce listings.

The temporary ban on Facebook ads and listings on Marketplace will start to be enforced this week, whereas Facebook already prohibits “people from making health or medical claims related to the coronavirus in product listings on commerce surfaces,” such as those that “guarantee a product will prevent someone from contracting” COVID-19.

The company also announced that it has created “a dedicated channel,” especially for local governments to share any listings they feel are violating local laws. Furthermore, Facebook says its teams are actively monitoring the situation, and more policy changes or updates may be necessary as they identify “people trying to exploit this public health emergency.”

Update: We’re banning ads and commerce listings selling medical face masks. We’re monitoring COVID19 closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency. We’ll start rolling out this change in the days ahead.
— Rob Leathern (@robleathern) March 7, 2020

The move is more of a deterrent against price gouging by certain unscrupulous retailers. Still, Facebook’s primary concern is to make sure that it’s not blamed for and Coronavirus-related issues – the spread of misinformation being a major one.

Facebook won’t ban political ads but starts banning ads selling medical face masks.

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In separate updates last week, Facebook has also announced efforts to remove misinformation on Instagram, Tweeting that “when someone taps on a hashtag related to COVID-19,” they are instead shown resources from the World Health Organization, the CDC, and local health authorities.

We’re removing known harmful misinformation related to COVID-19, and when someone taps on a hashtag related to COVID-19, we show resources from @WHO, @CDC and local health authorities. pic.twitter.com/Dw2Y8ZwfaI
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) March 6, 2020

Further to the above, Instagram‘s teams are sending posts that may be misleading to fact-checking partners for review, blocking and restricting hashtags used to spread misinformation, and banning any ads that are exploiting the situation.

Finally, we’re thinking through a longer term solution to help connect people searching COVID-19 related terms with credible information. In the meantime, we’re showing the accounts of leading health organizations in these searches to better connect people to credible resources. pic.twitter.com/RUNwJh94Cf
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) March 6, 2020