Twitter introduces new, more aggressive policy to fight COVID-19 misinformation

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On Wednesday, December 16th, Twitter announced further steps in its battle against COVID-19 misinformation. 

In their blog post, they acknowledged that they are an important platform where people like to discuss the current coronavirus pandemic. Because of that, they share a certain level of responsibility.

While they support conversations around the COVID-19 pandemic taking place on their platform, they can’t stay idle when it comes to the spread of misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines.

To that end, starting on December 21st, Twitter plans to remove the most harmful and fake COVID-19-related tweets.

Then, in the following weeks, Twitter will label potential false and misleading information related to COVID-19 vaccines.

Under their old policy, Twitter has already removed tweets containing misinformation or fake news about how the virus spreads, the efficacy of preventive measures, official restrictions and regulations, the risk of death, and so on. 

Under the updated policy, the old policy will still be in force, but will now include posts related to the COVID-19 vaccine

That will include false claims that COVID-19 is nothing serious, claims that COVID-19 vaccines can be harmful, claims that COVID-19 vaccines are part of some conspiracy, and claims that there are serious side effects of vaccination, and so on. 

The company will rely on both human reviewers and technology to enforce this new policy.

Additionally, Twitter plans to consult with global and local health authorities to root out fake and misleading misinformation related to COVID-19 vaccines and COVID-19 in general.

What do you think? Glad to see Twitter taking a stand against COVID-19 misinformation? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Twitter is set to relaunch its verification feature in January
• Twitter is rolling back that lame retweet feature
• Facebook will finally remove COVID-19 vaccine misinformation from its platforms
• Facebook has allegedly been watching Instagram users through phone cameras

Deep Ballu