Facebook will downrank junk medical science in your feed

Facebook is making a few changes to its site to reduce the spread of junk science claims. These are claims which promise miracle cures, which push deceptive medicines and share false health information. Aside from being misleading, such posts can be downright dangerous to users who believe them. Facebook considers such content as “particularly bad” for the community, so the firm has made a few changes over the last month.

As per Facebook, the firm made two changes:

• For the first update, we consider if a post about health exaggerates or misleads — for example, making a sensational claim about a miracle cure.
• For the second update, we consider if a post promotes a product or service based on a health-related claim — for example, promoting a medication or pill claiming to help you lose weight.

The firm anticipates that most pages should not be affected by reduced distribution unless they post junk science content. Once they stop posting misleading health claims, their posts will no longer be downranked.