Facebook to Turn Menlo Park Headquarters Into COVID-19 Vaccination Site

Facebook said on Friday that it is converting a part of its Menlo Park headquarters into a vaccination site, joining the government effort to speed up the vaccination drive in the US.

For this initiative, the company is teaming up with Ravenswood Family Health Centre, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a post.

"We're also teaming up with the State of California and local nonprofits to support mobile vaccination clinics in four of the state's hardest hit regions," wrote Sandberg.

Earlier this year, the social media company decided to launch a tool to give people in the US information about where to get COVID-19 vaccines and added a COVID-19 information area to its photo-sharing site, Instagram.

Facebook's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said in an interview that the company had taken viral false claims "very seriously" but said there was "a huge grey area of people who have concerns... some of which some people would call misinformation and some of which other people would call doubt". "The best thing to do in that huge grey area is just to show up with authoritative information in a helpful way, be a part of the conversation and do it with health experts," he added.

The company said it was labelling Facebook and Instagram posts that discuss the safety of COVID-19 vaccines with text saying the vaccines go through safety and effectiveness tests before approval. In the blog post, it also said that since expanding its list of banned false claims about the coronavirus and vaccines in February, it has removed an additional two million pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

Does WhatsApp's new privacy policy spell the end for your privacy? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.