Facebook suspends popular ‘anti-mask’ group for spreading inaccurate COVID-19 info

In a stark contrast to our country mulling a mandatory face mask rule, America has quite a number of people who are anti-masks—and they’re very vocal about it. There are even public groups on Facebook that support anti-masks. And Facebook has removed one of the largest of the anti-mask groups, “Unmasking America!”, for violating its policies against spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

The page isn’t available now, since it’s been suspended. But according to The Verge, the ‘About’ section of the now suspended page described it as “here to spread the TRUTH about masks!”, and has more than 9,600 members.

They also made several claims like about how masks obstruct oxygen flow and have a negative psychological impact. The claims, however, have been widely debunked.

Before, when you try to look up “unmasking” on Facebook’s Pages section, you’ll be able to see quite a few anti-mask groups. Now, when you do the same thing, you won’t be able to see any anti-mask groups. However, when you type in “anti-mask”, you will be able to see new groups being made in that category—but they currently don’t have too many followers.

The current anti-mask groups all share the same message: they oppose the public health intervention championed by medical experts. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people wear masks in all public areas, which should limit the spread of the virus.

While Facebook suspended one of the biggest anti-mask groups, there are still a lot of smaller groups with the same message popping up. And Facebook only suspended the group after an inquiry from The Verge.

“We have clear policies against promoting harmful misinformation about COVID 19 and have removed this group while we review the others,” said Facebook spokesperson Dami Oyefeso.

Although the social media platform hasn’t had the best track record when it comes to taking potentially harmful posts down when reported, Facebook has taken some steps to attempt to stem the flood of coronavirus misinformation. And according to their rules, if a group shares false news repeatedly, the platform will show the group’s content lower in users’ News Feeds and stop suggesting people join the group to reduce its growth.

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