A campaign of misleading ads on Facebook came under fire from activists for falsely linking the HIV med Truvada, when used for HIV prevention, with severe bone and kidney damage. The ads were “purchased by pages affiliated with personal-injury lawyers and seen millions of times,” according to The Washington Post.
The HIV preventive use of Truvada, aka “PrEP” (or “pre-exposure prophylaxis”), is in fact considered safe by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical experts.
On December 30, the Post reported that Facebook “quietly started removing” some of these ads.
“The removal of select ads is a strong first step given the findings of Facebook’s own fact-checking agency and the dozens of organizations that spoke out,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told the Post. “[The] time is now for Facebook to take action on other very similar ads which target at-risk community members with misleading and inaccurate claims about PrEP and HIV prevention.”
Reports the Post:
LGBT activists, led by GLAAD, started trying to get Facebook’s attention about the issue more than three months ago. They formally asked one of its fact-checking partners, a non-for-profit called Science Feedback, to review the ads in November, according to Jessica P. Johnson, its science editor. Facebook asked for a review on Dec. 13, she added, four days after The Post published its initial story and LGBT groups went public with their concerns.
The problem with the ads, LGBT advocates argued, is that they conflated the two applications of HIV-related drugs when, in fact, the preventive form, or PrEP, is safe. The advocates pointed to medical experts, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publicly advises PrEP is “highly effective” and “recommended” for people at high risk. Absent swift action, organizations including GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project said the ads threatened to scare patients away from a critical drug.
Facebook initially declined to take them down, signaling it would wait for a decision from its third-party fact checkers. Its handling of the issue drew sharp rebukes from top government officials, including New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is seeking her party’s nomination for president. Warren, who also has been critical of Facebook’ policies on political ads, said Facebook’s inaction could “have serious public health consequences,” adding in a tweet: “Facebook needs to put the safety of its users above its own advertising profits.”
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