Meta's new social media platform Threads is blocking searches related to COVID-19, a move that has been met with scrutiny from public health officials, The Washington Post reported Sept. 11.
Threads — a competitor to X, formerly known as Twitter — rolled out its search function last week. Currently, when users search for terms such as "COVID" and "long COVID," they are met with a pop-up linking to the CDC's website instead of relevant search results.
"The search functionality temporarily doesn't provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content," Meta told the Post. The company said it will add search functionality for terms only "once we are confident in the quality of the results."
The company declined to provide a full list of blocked terms, but a search from the Post found words such as "vaccines," "coronavirus" and vaccination" are included.
Some public health officials have criticized Meta's decision to block COVID-19- and vaccine-related content, especially at a time when virus activity is rising nationwide. They argue the ban will make it harder for health experts to disperse information about how people can protect themselves and also limit communications between patients in the long COVID-19 community who often turn to social media for connection and information sharing.
"Censoring searches for COVID and long COVID will only leave an information gap that will be filled by misinformation from elsewhere," Lucky Tran, PhD, director of science communication at New York City-based Columbia University, told the Post. "The best solution is to take proactive steps to elevate multiple trusted sources and address misinformation."