A Facebook announcement today has purveyors of pseudoscience and quackery in glee. It was announced that owners of pages could automatically ban or delete comments from people they deem to be “trolls”.
“This is a great day,” said the non-medically trained owner of Modern Alternative Mom (MAM) Facebook Page. “For too long people have been coming on my page and asking me to back up my claims with “evidence”. This is trolling of the highest level. Who wastes their time going on Facebook pages of people who make outlandish health claims and then ask them to prove it? Trolls. That’s who.”
Facebook recently had to start adding the word “satire” to satirical posts so people didn’t get fooled by stories from sites like The Onion and of course The Spudd (we assume).
Now, with this new policy, admins of Facebook pages can automatically filter out those pesky trolls asking you to back up what you write.
“Basically you can set a list of keywords that flag any comment as a troll,” said a Facebook employee.
“Again, this is great,” said MAM. “We set our keywords to ‘evidence’, ‘proof’, ‘science’ and ‘medicine’.”
Truly a great day for anti-vaccine Facebook pages everywhere.
