Facebook's introducing new tools to help people in Afghanistan lock down their accounts’ privacy settings. The “one-click” tool will activate privacy settings for timeline posts, and prevent profile photos from being downloaded or shared, Facebook’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a statement.

The feature will encourage users to "limit what unknown people can see," according to screenshots shared by Gleicher. The tool won’t be available on Instagram, but the photo sharing app is pushing “pop-up alerts” that will explain ways to lock down those accounts as well.

Facebook

Gleicher added that the company is also temporarily hiding friends lists of accounts in the country, and he encouraged people with Facebook friends in Afghanistan to change privacy settings for their friends list as well. “We’re working closely with our counterparts in industry, civil society and government to provide whatever support we can to help protect people,” he said. “And we've stood up a special operations center to respond to new threats as they emerge.”

Twitter is introducing several tweaks to its direct messaging functionality, with the improvements set to roll out in the coming weeks. To start, you can now share the same tweet with up to 20 different accounts separately. As the company points out, that’s an improvement that should lead to fewer accidental group chats. The feature is currently rolling out now to iOS and web users, with an expansion on Android to follow “soon.”

On mobile, the company is also adding a quick-scroll button so you can quickly jump to the most recent message in a conversation when glancing over any past correspondence. As an iOS owner, you will also find Twitter has cleaned up timestamps by grouping messages by date. Additionally, if you long press on something someone sends you, there's a new reaction picker.

While none of the tweaks Twitter announced today are groundbreaking, they’re handy all the same. They should also be less controversial than the font change the company pushed out last week.

It took Facebook several hours to pull down a livestream from a man suspected of making a bomb threat at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. According to Politico, the unidentified man, who approached the Library of Congress in a pickup truck and told police he had a bomb in the car, streamed live on Facebook for multiple hours as police negotiated with him. The video "circulated widely" before Facebook finally took it down.

On Twitter, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company had taken down the stream and the man's profile and is "continuing to investigate" the matter. 

It's not the first time Facebook has had to scramble to prevent a disturbing live stream from spreading. In 2019, the company raced to pull down more than a million copies of a live stream recorded by a mass shooter in New Zealand, in an effort that took multiple days. 

Developing...

There’s a scene in 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order where J, a character inspired by Jimi Hendrix, explains to the game’s white protagonist, BJ Blazkowicz, why he’s not fighting. After Blazkowicz talks back, J tells him: "You don't get it, do you? Before all this, before the Germans, before the war, back home, man, you were the Nazis."

What I love about that scene is the way it complicates the easy narrative we so often tell ourselves about the Second World War. The New Order understands World War II better than almost any other game inspired by the conflict. Nazism, then as now, was never an ideology that only existed in Hitler's Germany. And in internment camps across the US and Canada and cities like Dresden and Hiroshima, the Allies committed countless injustices of their own.

It's that scene my mind returned to as Sledgehammer Games revealed Call of Duty: Vanguard, the next entry in Activision's long-running first-person shooter series, during an online event last week. Like 2017's Call of Duty: WWII, the studio's previous project as lead developer on the franchise, Vanguard takes the series back to where it all started: the Second World War.

After talking about the studio's commitment to diversity and creating a safe space for all employees, essentially repeating the same company line Activision Blizzard executives have been saying ever since California filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the publisher, Sledgehammer studio head Aaron Halon introduced Vanguard director Josh Bridge and campaign director David Swenson. Bridge told us how the studio came out of Call of Duty: WWII feeling like it had only scratched the surface of the stories the conflict had to tell. "We see [Vanguard] as being rooted in but not beholden to history. There is no revisionist history here," he said, a bullet point on his Powerpoint presentation reiterating the statement.

Sledgehammer Games / Activision

After showing the game's cinematic trailer and a snippet of gameplay, Swenson talked about the game's story. Like The New Order, Vanguard uses an alternate reality of the war to tell its story, but it appears a much less ambitious retelling on the surface. In a return to the way Infinity Ward did things when the series first started, Vanguard’s campaign will feature four playable characters, each loosely based on a different historical person.

In Polina Petrova, Sledgehammer took inspiration from Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Soviet sharpshooter who was known as Lady Death for her 309 confirmed kills, the most of any female sniper in history. Wade Jackson, one of the other characters, is based on Vernon L. Micheel, a US Navy pilot who bombed two Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway. Then there's Lucas Riggs. He draws from Charles Upham, the only soldier in World War II to earn two Victoria Cross medals.

Finally, you have Arthur Kingsley. His inspiration is Sidney Cornell, a Black British paratrooper who earned a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions in Normandy. To Sledgehammer's credit, the studio enlisted the help of science fiction writer Tochi Onyebuchi to write Kingsley's character and cast Chike Okonkwo, best known for his role as Will in The Birth of a Nation, to give him his voice.

Sledgehammer Games / Activision

Initially, those four find themselves in different theaters of the war, but they're eventually brought together to take part in a fictional mission called Operation Phoenix. The Nazis, under the guidance of a character named Heinrich Freisinger, have hatched a plan to survive the end of the war and it's up to the newly formed special forces team of Petrova, Jackson, Riggs and Kingsley to stop them. Like the four protagonists, Freisinger has a historical counterpart. He's based on the infamous Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller.

Bridge said the studio sees the title as "a filmic blockbuster, with a contemporary lens on history." The throughline that connects both the story and multiplayer components of the game is how the Second World War saw the birth of the modern idea of the special forces. This is World War II reframed as an entry point into the expanded Call of Duty universe. I won't say that's unexpected, but after Sledgehammer tried to tell a more nuanced story about PTSD in CoD: WW2, I had hoped it would set its sights even higher.

At the reveal event, Sledgehammer spent far more time talking about Vanguard’s story than letting the game speak for itself. Of the single-player campaign, the developer only showed a brief snippet of an early level that features Kingsley taking part in Operation Tonga, which saw British paratroopers land near the city of Caen during the Allied invasion of Normandy. If you've seen Band of Brothers, you already know exactly how this segment plays out.

Sledgehammer Games / Activision

You jump out of a plane as part of a pre-scripted sequence in which you lose your rifle before landing on the ground. After a series of quick time events, your character finds himself in front of a field, an objective marker telling the player to make their way to a windmill in the distance. For part of the level, you have to sneak your way through enemy lines.

Other than an unexpected moment toward the end of the clip, nothing about what I saw struck me as something the franchise hasn't done before, but the execution was still compelling. True to the conditions Allied paratroopers found themselves in during the D-Day invasion, much of the mission takes place in suffocating fog and darkness. That gave the level more of a sense of atmosphere than your typical CoD mission. In particular, the use of lighting was intentional in a way I hadn't seen from the series in a while, the effect made more realistic by the work Sledgehammer and the other CoD studios did to update Modern Warfare's IW 8.0 engine.

What also struck me about this sequence was the stolen Kar98K Kingsley used to dispatch his Nazi pursuers. When he fired the bolt-action rifle, it let out a deafening blast and left enemies crumpled against the floor and walls. There was more physicality to the weapon than the assault rifles that usually dominate the CoD metagame. That "down the barrel" gameplay is something the studio said it spent a lot of the nearly four years since CoD: WW2 perfecting.

Sledgehammer Games / Activision

It's hard to say if the rest of the single-player campaign adopts the more methodical pace to gunplay Sledgehammer showed off in the snippet I saw. However, I can state that multiplayer will feel familiar to current Black Ops Cold War and Warzone players. What you will find is that Sledgehammer designed the maps to feature more destructibility and interactive elements. A clip the studio shared showed off how you could shoot bookshelves, tables and boarded-up windows to open sightlines as a match progresses.

At launch, Vanguard will feature 20 multiplayer maps, 16 of which will support up to 12 players for six-on-six matches. Additionally, Sledgehammer is bringing Gunsmith back, a fan-favorite feature that allows you to customize your weapons with different attachments and ammo types. Naturally, Treyarch's Zombies mode is making a comeback, and it will connect to the lore established in Black Ops Cold War. Oh, and Raven Software is working on a Warzone map and update that will feature an all-new anti-cheat system. Sledgehammer promised to share more information about the multiplayer component of Vanguard, including details on a new mode called Champion Hill that the studio says will offer something new for players to experience, in the coming weeks.

That will give Call of Duty fans time to see if Vanguard is worth another trip to World War II before the game lands on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PS5 and PC via Battle.net on November 5th.

Starting today, some Facebook users in the US will see Reels, Instagram’s take on TikTok-like short-form videos, appear throughout the company's main app, the social media giant told The Verge. If Facebook enrolls you in the test, you’ll see the clips appear nestled in the News Feed and within Groups. The experiment is an expansion to an existing one Facebook is running in Canada, India and Mexico.

In addition to watching Reels on the platform, you can record them directly from the Facebook app. Moreover, much like with Stories, Instagram users can cross-post the clips to Facebook. The company told The Verge the test is in part a response to the popularity of the format, with interest in the clips growing "especially quickly."

Whatever you think of them, it’s safe to say short-form videos are here to stay, and Facebook isn’t the only company intent on integrating the format into its mainline app. Just last month, YouTube rolled out tools for creating Shorts to users in 100 countries and started paying out creators from the $100 million fund it created to support the format.

Ahead of the show's Apple TV+ premiere on September 24th, Apple has offered another look at its latest sci-fi saga, Foundation. The latest trailer doesn't reveal too much about the story, but it has some impressive visuals. 

The clip features a elevator that, according to showrunner David S. Goyer, stretches around 26 miles into space. There's also a floating visualization of a supercomputer that takes design cues from a Möbius strip. Goyer told IGN that he challenged his production team to find a look that didn't remind viewers of Star Wars or Star Trek, perhaps the two biggest linchpins of science fiction. In any case, it's clear Apple hasn't skimped on the budget.

The show seems to be much more about humanity more than eye-popping visual effects, though. Based on a series of Isaac Asimov novels, Foundation centers around a group of exiles who try to protect the future of civilization after leader Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) uses data to predict the fall of the Galactic Empire. What's left of the Empire isn't too thrilled about that, and it tries to suppress Seldon's group.

The story plays out over the course of a millennium. The first season will run for 10 episodes, with the first two episodes dropping at the same time and the remainder hitting Apple TV+ on a weekly basis.

Apple TV+ has more sci-fi projects on the way. Invasion, oddly enough, is a series about an alien invasion. It debuts on October 22nd. A couple of weeks later, on November 5th, Apple will release Finch, a movie starring Tom Hanks as an inventor who hits the road with his dog and a robot. A third season of For All Mankind is also in the works.

Am I a weirdo for liking in-person meetings? Sure, they can go on too long, be scheduled far too often and distract from your core work. But even before the pandemic made them an exotic memory, I always loved the energy of being in a room with other people, finding the same creative wavelength, working towards a common goal. There's no video chat app that can replicate that. So, what about VR?

We've already seen companies like Spatial take a stab at virtual meetings, where you can chat with others, inspect objects and even explore 3D environments from the comfort your home with a VR headset. Now Facebook's Oculus is entering the fray with Horizon Workrooms, an ambitious attempt to capture the best aspects of in-person meetings for Oculus Quest 2 users.

To be clear, Workrooms isn'tFacebook Horizon, its long-awaited multiplayer VR playground. But it is part of the company's overall vision for the Horizon universe, one entirely devoted to collaborating in meeting rooms and classrooms. And despite being so focused, it's still a showpiece for Facebook's VR ambitions, tapping into the company's expressive avatars, spatial sound, hand tracking and mixed-reality capabilities. You'll even be able to stream your PC desktop in VR to take notes or goof off during meetings (just like real life!).

After spending an hour in a Horizon Workrooms demo, it's clear that Facebook still has plenty of work left to do. There were a few connection issues, avatar glitches and at one point I got booted out entirely. But when it was running smoothly, it was the closest I've felt to being in an live meeting since March of last year.

But let me start from the beginning. After creating a Workrooms account, I installed the PC companion app and the Workrooms Quest 2 app. Once I booted it up in VR, I was surprised that it recommended putting my controllers down and enabling the Quest 2's hand-tracking. Outside of demos for that feature, I can't think of any Oculus apps that have done the same. After that, I customized a goofy avatar — an idealized version of myself with purple hair and no beer belly — and mapped out the edge of my desk so Workrooms can accurately place me in front of virtual tables.

Facebook

As soon as I hopped into my Horizon Workrooms demo, it was instantly clear why Oculus recommended hand-tracking. I waved to a PR rep, and as I struggled to unmute myself, I was able to throw a thumbs up to confirm I was hearing her. I shouted hello to CNET's Scott Stein, who was sitting a few seats away, and his audio sounded appropriately far off. We all spent way too much time staring at our hands and testing the limits of the Quest 2's finger tracking capabilities (for the record, rolling your hands over each other like a wannabe raver can easily scramble things).

Even though I was in a swanky virtual room, with a stylized deer head wearing VR goggles on the wall, and ceiling-tall windows overlooking expansive lake and mountain rage somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, sitting desk-side with others felt vaguely normal. We made small talk about our families and our vastly different locations (including folks in California, New Jersey, London and myself in Atlanta). I could see who was working on Macs and PCs, based on the virtual accessories in front of them. And along the wall there were also video feeds from other Facebook reps calling in from their PCs, which reminded me of the enormous video conferencing screens in many meeting rooms.

To see my keyboard and mouse, I hit a button to enable pass-through mode, which projected grey-scale footage of my actual desk inside of Workrooms' VR environment. It wasn't crystal clear, but it was enough to touch-type notes in Evernote by streaming my PC desktop. If you're running an Apple Magic Keyboard or a specific Logitech model, you'll also be able to see your keyboard in VR, so you won't have to deal with the pass-through video.

Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's head of VR and AR, said during the demo that he believes there's "something missing" with video calling, and that there's a strong pull towards VR collaboration apps as a solution. Of course, that's exactly what you'd expect Facebook's VR lead to say. But he has a point.

Video calls are a fantastic way for seeing people and maintaining social connections. But when it comes to getting work done, they can get old fast. Everyone's audio comes in from one channel; it's hard to make eye contact in large group chats; and the entire session just lives on your computer or phone screen. There's no sense of actually being in a space with others. Bosworth says that Facebook has been using Workrooms internally for about six months, and he's noticed some clear benefits. In particular, he can remember specific meetings better thanks to the immersion of sitting beside people in VR with realistic spatial audio.

Facebook

Of course, virtual reality can also make meetings awkward in entirely new ways. I quickly learned that I couldn't look closely at someone's avatar if they were sitting nearby, because it actually felt like I was staring at them. I couldn't reach for a cup of water on my real-world desk, because it was sitting in front of my neighbor's virtual space. I also had to be careful about where I placed my hands, because the Quest 2's hand tracking could make things look... suspect, if they're under your desk.

All of that awkwardness culminated when Mark Zuckerberg crashed our demo and sat in the virtual chair beside me. He sketched out his overall vision for Horizon as a stepping stone for his metaverse ambitions. But as he was speaking, I was also trying hard to keep my virtual cool: Don't stare! Don't be weird with your hands! Pay attention and be respectful! I thought I was doing pretty well in the heat of the moment, but a recording of our session looked like I was performing some sort of interpretive dance beside the world's fifth richest man. (Thankfully, that footage isn't meant for public consumption.)

Zuckerberg only stopped by for a few minutes, but the fact he made an appearance at all is telling. Workrooms isn't some side project: It's a significant component of what he wants Facebook to become. You can see that in the app's more ambitious features, like a whiteboard that can grow as long as you'd like. You can sketch out thoughts by holding your Oculus controller straight up, so that you can use the end like a massive pen. And if you want to stretch your legs, you can assign a blank wall in your room to serve as your life-sized whiteboard. You can also change the size and layout of your workspace at will, allowing you to move from a circular conference table to something that resembles a classroom.

Facebook

Perhaps because Zuckerberg wants Workrooms to be a success, the company is also making it more accessible to people who don't want Facebook accounts. You can join a session via video chat by creating a Workrooms account, which is separate from Oculus and Facebook logins. If you want to enjoy the experience in VR, though, you'll need a Facebook account to use the Quest 2. Maybe letting people peek at the 2D Workrooms experience could encourage them to go virtual.

The company is also being up-front about security and privacy, saying that it won't use conversations or materials from Workrooms sessions to inform Facebook ads. You'll also be able to report individuals and entire groups if they're harassing you or violating community standards. That was a major concern when I demoed Facebook Horizons last year; the idea of a VR playground sounds great, but how do you make it safe for everyone? 

If anything, Horizon Workrooms tells us that Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions are more than just marketing fluff. He paid $2 billion for Oculus, after all, and Facebook has continually invested in VR development and content. You don't spend that sort of money if you don't have a vision for the future. 

When he stopped by our demo, Zuckerberg told us he used to scribble code in his notebook during middle school. As soon as he got home, he would type it up with the hopes of building an immersive world to hang out with friends. Workrooms isn't the perfect VR collaboration solution yet, but it could be the start of what the younger Zuckerberg envisioned. After all, the metaverse won't be built in a day.

The following contains spoilers for season two, episode two of 'Star Trek: Lower Decks.'

I’ve been a Star Trek fan for most of my life, and yet I still chuckled at this Onion video released after the first J.J. Abrams installment came out back in 2009: “Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable.’” Star Trek isn’t to a lot of people’s taste, J.J. Abrams’ among them. He’s said in interviews he never really liked Trek and was trying to make it more like Star Wars. (This was six years before The Force Awakens came out.) The reboot films were a breath of fresh air after four years of no original Trek content, and they did get some new fans into the franchise. Some of those novices would later dip their toe into the water of TV Trek and found that they did actually enjoy it a lot, despite its slower pace.

However, despite the franchise’s strong TV track record with shows like TNG and DS9, the Paramount+ era has been taking its cues from the Abrams films, which isn’t surprising with executive producer Alex Kurtzman at the helm. Alongside Roberto Orci, he’s one of the two screenwriters behind 2009 Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as a J.J. Abrams collaborator on Alias and Fringe. Given the box office numbers of the Abramsverse films it makes sense to put him in charge, but it still made a lot of long-time Trekkies groan as we had hoped for a return to the kind of shows we grew up on.

After three seasons of heavy action on Discovery and the jaded grimdark of season one of Picard, the first season of Lower Decks injected some levity back into the franchise, with parody that went up to, but not quite over the line. It couldn’t, since it was intended to be canon. It had to fit alongside TNG, DS9 and Voyager. So it packed in plenty of references to keep the wiki addicts over at the Star Trek-centric Memory Alpha busy, while indulging in old tropes like drunk Klingons, arena battles and the occasional omnipotent being. It also took some direct swipes at the live action Trek shows, like how crew members always seem to die in the most low-tech ways like being impaled by spears or how of course the holodeck is used for sex stuff.

CBS

But those references were always in a more general sense, framed in a “wouldn’t X be ridiculous” way that only long-term fans with deep knowledge of the franchise would fully understand. Until this week’s episode, that is, where crew members of the USS Titan specifically call out the Enterprise D and its galactic cruise ship mentality. Shakespearean plays and string quartets? Peace conferences? How utterly boring compared to the constant run-and-gun that the Titan seems to have been stuck in since last season. They judge the value of their work based on how exciting it is, and think that William Riker must have been bored to tears being stuck on that ship for seven years.

Of course, TNG fans know it was anything but boring for Riker. He’s been locked in a mental institution, trapped in an alternate future and even had god-like powers for an episode. And he likes performing in jazz concerts with his trombone!

CBS

None of this slander sits right with new crew member Brad Boimler, who transferred over from the USS Cerritos at the end of last season. The Titan’s pursuit of the dangerous Pakleds has the young lieutenant junior grade in a constant state of panic as he mans the flight conn position, a big change from quietly toiling away on the lower decks of his old ship. But he’s recognized that this is where the opportunities for promotion are, and soon finds himself on an undercover mission with his fellow bridge crew. At least, it’s supposed to be undercover — the other Titan members quickly get them embroiled in a shootout and facing certain death.

That’s when Boimler takes the opportunity to tell his crewmates how he really feels. “I’d love to be in a string quartet. I love that when Riker was on the Enterprise he was out there jamming on the trombone and catching love disease and acting in plays and meeting his identical transporter clone Thomas. That stuff might not seem as cool as what you guys do, but it’s Starfleet, all the way.” His confession elicits similar confessions from the other team members, before they manage to find a way out in classic technobabble fashion.

CBS

For years Star Trek has always danced around the question of whether Starfleet was a military force. It employs naval ranks and the ships are outfitted with phasers and photon torpedoes for defense. But its stated purpose was exploration and other activities that help tie the vast Federation together. The Abrams films spent all their time reacting to one crisis after another — the crew didn’t start an actual mission of exploration until the very end of Beyond, and there hasn’t been another film since to follow up on that.

Both DS9 and Discovery engaged in wars with the Klingon Empire. On Enterprise the crew ended up hunting down the Xindi with a cadre of trained soldiers on board for its third season. Even Voyager had to deal with the constant accusations that they were a conquering force as they struggled to get home. Lower Decks is our first look in a while at a Starfleet dedicated to exploration, with the crew of the Cerritos specializing in “second contact,” that is, getting communication and trade set up with the planets that flashier ships like the Enterprise meet in their adventures. 

So Lower Decks has always been a sort of commentary on the greater Star Trek philosophy, but it’s never been as blatant as Brad Boimler saying, “I didn’t join Starfleet to get in phaser fights. I signed up to explore, to be out in space making new discoveries and peaceful diplomatic solutions. That’s boldly going.”

CBS

The Onion video takes old school Trek fans to task for being gatekeepers, for wallowing and fetishizing things that other folks find boring. The new era of Trek has stretched the definition of what Star Trek could be, expanding into new genres and injecting a little action to sate the appetites of modern audiences. But Lower Decks is the first time I’ve seen pushback from within the franchise itself. The show is basically saying, “Sure, Star Trek can be exciting, but there’s a reason it became popular in the first place!” Let’s hope that with future programs like Strange New Worlds, Alex Kurtzman is listening.

Back in March, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a report linking more than two-thirds of vaccine misinformation online to12 individuals. That statistic has been widely cited since, including by lawmakers and government officials, as proof that Facebook has failed to control lies about COVID-19 vaccines.

Now, five months later, Facebook says it has banned more than 36 accounts, groups, and Pages associated with these misinformation “superspreaders.” The company says it’s taken other actions to make other content associated with these individuals less visible, as well.

“We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others,” Facebook said in a statement. “We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed. Notably, some accounts associated with the group remain online, which Facebook says is because they are either “inactive,” not posting rule-breaking content or have only shared “a small amount” of such content.

Facebook has taken issue with the CCDH’s report since it was first published, disputing its methodology and its conclusion. In its latest statement, the social network said “there isn’t any evidence” to support the report’s claim that 73 percent of vaccine misinformation is linked to the group, which includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, Del Bigtree and other prominent anti-vaccine activists. Yet the report has become a headache for the company as it was cited by the US Surgeon General last month in a health advisory warning the public of vaccine misinformation online. Overall, the company has removed around 3,000 groups, pages and accounts for repeatedly breaking its rules against COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation during the pandemic, though the company still hasn’t shared stats on how often such misinformation is being viewed.

In a statement, CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said that Facebook had “grossly misrepresented” the research. “Facebook has grossly misrepresented CCDH and Anti-Vax Watch's research while continuing to withhold the data that show how many of its users have been exposed to disinformation fueling vaccine hesitancy. CCDH and Anti-Vax Watch continue to be fully transparent about their methodologies, which rely on publicly available tools for tracking audience and content reach.”

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook has taken a much tougher stance on health misinformation than it has in the past, removing millions of posts for sharing misinformation. Now, we know just how many accounts, groups and pages have been banned from the platform for repeatedly breaking those rules: 3,000.

Facebook shared the stat as part of its community standards enforcement report, which measures how the company enforces its rules. The number may seem low given the vast amount of misinformation on Facebook about the pandemic and the vaccines.The company also said that more than 20 million pieces of content have been removed and more than 190 million have warning labels between the start of the pandemic in 2020 and this past June.

But the relatively low number of bans — just 3,0000 — tracks with findings by researchers who say that just a few individuals are responsible for the vast majority of vaccine mistruths on social media.

During a call with reporters, Facebook’s VP of Content Policy Monika Bickert, said the company has had to continually evolve its policies, and that it now removes 65 types of vaccine falsehoods, such as posts saying COVID-19 shots cause magnetism. She also noted that some groups have used “coded language” to try to evade the company’s detection, which can pose a challenge.

Facebook’s handling of vaccine misinformation has been in the spotlight in recent months as government officials, including President Joe Biden, have said Facebook should do more to counter mistruths about the COVID-19 vaccines. On its part, Facebook says that vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50 percent in the US, according to its surveys, and that its COVID-19 Information Center has reached 2 billion people.