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Facebook on Thursday said it had removed the page of Australian celebrity chef turn conspiracy theorist Pete Evans for spreading false information about COVID-19.
Evans, a former prime time judge at an Australian cooking show with a large list of cookbooks, has become one of the nation’s leading commentators in questioning baseless arguments. COVID-19, Calls it “fake” and “BS” to his millions Facebook Followers.
He urged people not to be tested or vaccinated for the virus, which has killed more than 1.7 million people, and experts say it is important to end the epidemic. Despite announcing his departure from Facebook on his Instagram page on November 20, he continued to post there until Thursday until his page disappeared.
“We do not allow anyone to share false information about COVID – 19, which could lead to imminent physical harm or (about) the removal of the COVID – 19 vaccine by public health professionals,” Facebook said in a statement.
“We have clear policies against this kind of content and we have removed Chef Pete Evans’ Facebook page for repeatedly violating these policies.”
Facebook did not say why Evans kept the page Instagram, It has. There, Evans told his 2,78,000 followers Thursday that he was “very happy to be one of the catalysts for dialogue on such an important issue (freedom of speech).”
In previous Instagram posts, still online, he described the vaccine as a “scam” and “poison” and discouraged coronavirus testing by saying “no test … no cases”.
Facebook, which has been under pressure to curb misinformation on its platform, said it would begin removing the claims about coronavirus vaccines from Facebook and Instagram earlier this month. As of August, a group of lawyers had claimed that the platform had hosted 3.8 billion views misleading health issues – swamping the amount of legal information.
This week the Israeli government, at its request, said it had removed four groups that had spread texts, photographs and videos with “deliberately excellent content designed to mislead about coronavirus vaccines.
© Thomson Reuters 2020
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