• A study in Science reveals that unflagged, factual, but misleading Facebook posts in the United States reduced the intent to receive the COVID-19 vaccine 46 times more than flagged false posts.

• Researchers from MIT and UPenn surveyed thousands about the influence of 130 vaccine-related headlines.

• They extrapolated results to predict the impact of 13,206 Facebook links on the vaccination intentions of 233 million US users.

• They found that unflagged, misleading content from credible sources was viewed hundreds of millions of times and significantly reduced vaccination intentions by 2.28 percentage points per user, compared to 0.05 percentage points for flagged content.

• The study highlights that exposure had a greater impact than flagging status, suggesting that content moderation should also prioritize reviewing widely viewed content rather than just identifying false information.

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