Facebook Has Banned Hand Sanitizer Ads Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

Social media giant Facebook has banned adds for hand sanitizer, surface disinfecting wipes and COVID-19 test kits.

The company said on Thursday that it banned these ads and commerce listings for the products.

Rob Leathern, Director of Product Management at Facebook, tweeted about the change and the company wrote in a blog post that it will also remove posts on Facebook or Instagram where people are trying to sell those items.

“This is another step to help protect against inflated prices and predatory behavior we’re seeing,” Leathern wrote on Twitter. “We’ll be ramping up our automated enforcement for ads and commerce next week. If we see abuse around these products in organic posts, we’ll remove those, too.”

The company wrote in a blog post that it would send home contract workers who review content posted to its services.
Facebook also recently said it would be rolling out its own coronavirus information center, a central hub on the vast social network where the company will collect information from sources like the CDC and WHO.

“We’re going to be putting it at the top of everyone’s Facebook feed,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

The info center will roll out in “a number” of U.S. locations and some in Europe across the next 24 hours, with a more global rollout in the next few days.

“Were designing it to be very adaptive on a day to day basis,” Zuckerberg said. The center will include information that varies from location to location “because the guidance is different in different countries.” He noted that the company is coordinating with various governments to tailor that info.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and have not been compensated for this article.