Facebook making money from firms targeting new parents with homeopathic ‘vaccine alternatives’, investigation finds 

Facebook is boosting its profits by allowing advertisers to cynically target new parents with homeopathic "vaccine alternatives", a Telegraph investigation has found.

The social media giant is auctioning off advertising space for up to 18 pence per click to anyone peddling controversial homeopathic remedies beloved by anti-vaxxers.

Alarmingly, advertisers can ensure their content is shown to people whose children are of vaccination age, and who may never have displayed any interest in alternatives to the immunisations recommended by the NHS. 

The revelation comes amid a decline in vaccination rates in Britain for all major childhood diseases – partly fuelled by some homeopaths peddling misinformation.

Immunisations against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) hit a five year low in September. Meanwhile, Britain lost its measles-free status following a resurgence of cases of the disease, whose complications can cause deafness, brain damage or be fatal. 

In March, Facebook pledged to "reject" adverts spreading anti-vaccine misinformation.

However, reporters at this newspaper found that the web giant still allows adverts offering "homeopathic vaccination alternatives", or treatment for supposed "vaccine injury". It also allows adverts promoting homeopathic "autism cures" to be targeted at parents whose online search history shows they have been seeking support for autism.

On Sunday, Damian Collins, Conservative MP and chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, condemned the practice.

"It’s appalling that Facebook will allow people to target vulnerable people, such as parents seeking information that could help their children, and allowing peddlers of bogus remedies to use Facebook ad tools to target those people.

"I find it astonishing that Facebook did not spot this, and stop it. Things like this pose a real danger to people’s safety."

Telegraph journalists set up a website purporting to be a homeopathic business offering a series of controversial therapies. In an advert on Facebook, it boasted that it specialises in "vaccine alternatives for kids, vaccine injury, cease [sic] therapy and autism cures".

CEASE therapy - which stands for Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression – is a highly controversial autism ‘treatment’ which purports to undo the effects of vaccines. With no scientific evidence to support it, the Advertising Standards Authority has banned practitioners from saying that they can cure autism.  

However, Facebook’s only objection to the Telegraph’s advert was that the reporter had spelled the word "CEASE" in capital letters – and not in the lower-case text it prefers.

Once the journalists changed the text so that CEASE was lower case, the social media firm accepted the advert. 

It said in a message: "We’ll let you know when your first ad has been approved." Another message, received on the same day, confirmed that it had been approved.

It also allowed reporters to target it at "new parents (0-12 months)", "parents with pre-schoolers (3-5 years)" and "parents with toddlers (aged 1-2)" – the age groups when they are due to receive most of their vaccinations, following the NHS schedule.

The "advertiser" was then invited to target people within those groups with specific additional interests. In each case, the reporter wrote a word such as "vaccines" or "autism", and Facebook provided a list of categories it deemed applicable.

They included "autism awareness", "autism support network", "autism: spectrum support", "child development", "child development stages", "early childhood", "early childhood intervention", "talk about curing autism", "vaccine-preventable diseases".

The journalist was also able to choose categories such as "child development", "vaccine-preventable diseases" and "early childhood".

Facebook said yesterday: "We do not want ads that include widely debunked misinformation or make misleading and unsubstantiated claims on our platform. When we find them, we will reject them. 

"Our ad review process uses a combination of automated and human review, and while we won't catch every ad as it is created we will act on any ads that are subsequently reported to us.”    

Google also allowed journalists to run adverts casting doubt on the safety of vaccines, and offering dubious homeopathic treatments for autism.

It approved an advert offering "MMR vaccine alternatives".

It also charged 64 pence per click to show an advert promoting a homeopathy that claimed to be "specialist in: vaccination risks to kids; vaccine injury; cease therapy, Autism cures".

Unlike Facebook, it did not allow the "advertiser" to target users with no demonstrable interest in homeopathy or cease therapy. However, it did auction off the chance to ensure the advert appeared against searches for a long list of phrases which included "homeopath pregnancy", "treatment for vaccine injury" and "homeopath for kids".

The Telegraph did not win any of these bids, so the advert was shown against searches for terms such as "homeopathic medicine".

Google admitted that the advert broke its policy around autism and removed it. A spokesman said: "We never want the ads people see on Google to be harmful or misleading, so we have policies which prohibit ads that promote harmful health claims or ‘miracle cures’. While our systems work correctly in the vast majority of cases and this ad didn’t appear against any queries about autism, it shouldn't have been allowed to run at all."