Brazilian President’s Remarks on Vaccines and AIDS Violate Platform Policies
Facebook and Instagram removed a live broadcast by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro after he claimed that people in the U.K. who had received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were developing AIDS faster than expected.
In a statement, Facebook confirmed that the content, broadcast on Sunday night, violated its COVID-19 vaccine policy, which prohibits claims suggesting that vaccines cause death or serious harm. The company did not address questions from The Associated Press regarding why the content remained online for three days before being taken down, nor if language barriers, with Bolsonaro speaking in Portuguese, contributed to the delay.
Bolsonaro’s controversial remarks sparked backlash, with critics accusing him of spreading misinformation that could harm public health efforts.
