Misinformation remains one of the biggest issues facing social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the likes of Facebook already having to take additional measures to combat its spread. Now Twitter is taking similar precautions by removing misleading tweets related to COVID-19.
The company recently updated its COVID-19 policies, and is looking to remove any tweets that are misleading, as well as having the potential to incite violence.
We saw examples of this earlier this month, when conspiracy theories linking the erection of 5G towers to the spread of the virus. This resulted in people setting said towers alight in the UK, despite there being no scientific evidence to support the claims.
“Unverified claims that incite people to action, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical infrastructure, or could lead to widespread panic, social unrest, or large-scale disorder, such as ‘The National Guard just announced that no more shipments of food will be arriving for two months — run to the grocery store ASAP and buy everything’ or ‘5G causes coronavirus — go destroy the cell towers in your neighborhood!’,” Twitter explained in its updated COVID-19 policies.
Speaking to TechCrunch, a spokesperson for the company noted that, “We’re prioritizing the removal of COVID-19 content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm.”
To that end the platform has already removed an estimated 2 230 tweets, but it will not remove all misleading ones.
“As we’ve said previously, we will not take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about COVID-19,” the spokesperson added.
Consequently, the firm will not be acting upon all misleading tweets, which means there will still be a lot of misinformation on the platform. Still, taking measures against the ones which could result in damage to property or physical harm is a good step to take.
As for what kinds of additional measures will be taking against an account which tweets misleading information that could incite violence, Twitter is yet to confirm.
