Twitter will straight-up ban you if keep pushing out COVID-19 misinformation

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Social media companies have been taking a more active role in reducing the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, with Facebook actually being one of the first companies to take a stricter stance on it.

Now, Twitter is updating its policies by adding a new strike system. Unlike baseball, this will be a five-strike system, with the first strike being a freebie, at least for your account.

The tweet will still be flagged, and its visibility reduced. That said, if it is a gross violation of Twitter’s misinformation policies, the tweet will be deleted, and you’ll be hit with two strikes.

The second strike will get the user a 12-hour account lock. The third is another 12-hour account lock. From there, Twitter turns up the hit, with the fourth strike resulting in a 7-day ban and the fifth strike being an indefinite suspension.

Things that can hit you with a strike include false information about masks, preventative measures, vaccines, and more.

Vaccines are the main focus here, however. The company works with “trusted partners, including public health authorities, NGOs and governments.”

According to TheNextWeb, Twitter will initially use human moderators for this task but eventually wants to use a combination of AI and humans to handle the large undertaking.

It will also be focused on English-speaking users at first before expanding in the future.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Twitter’s upcoming Super Follows feature will allow you to pay others for their trash tweets
• Of course Facebook is considering facial recognition for its smart glasses
• Parler has somehow managed to get itself back online
• Jack Dorsey’s Square purchased 3,318 Bitcoins worth $170 million