‘Anti-vax’ groups on Meta’s Facebook have been using carrot emojis to evade automated moderation tools, according to the BBC.

Facebook's algorithms tend to focus on words rather than images, said the news broadcaster, and shared that they had seen several groups, one with hundreds of thousands of members, in which the carrot emoji appeared in place of the word "vaccine".

The BBC reported that one group it saw has been around for three years but rebranded itself to focus on vaccine stories, from being a group for sharing "banter, bets and funny videos" in August 2022.

The rules of the 250,000-member group read: "Use code words for everything."

It added: "Do not use the c word, v word or b word (covid, vaccine, booster) ever."

After the BBC alerted Meta to the groups, they were removed.

Meta issued a statement which read: “We have removed this group for violating our harmful misinformation policies and will review any other similar content in line with this policy.

“We continue to work closely with public health experts and the UK government to further tackle Covid vaccine misinformation."

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