• During the height of the pandemic, Twitter, like many other social media platforms took a strong stance against COVID-19 misinformation. 
• A month into his ownership of the platform, Elon Musk has seemingly stopped enforcing that misinformation policy.
• The change happened with no official announcement, a week ago already.

Describing Elon Musk’s first month as owner of Twitter as chaotic would be an understatement, with the social media platform battling advertisers, at odds with app marketplaces, firing most of its staff, and seemingly allowing anything and everything back on its site again under the guise of free speech and inclusion.

The latest move from the company has been far less public, but it is as equally concerning, as Twitter surreptitiously ended its enforcement of a COVID-19 misinformation policy.

This happened earlier this month, 23rd November to be precise, with CNN discovering a well-hidden notification on the company’s transparency portal.

“As the global community faces the COVID-19 pandemic together, Twitter is helping people find reliable information, connect with others, and follow what’s happening in real-time. Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” the notification reads.

This is concerning given that there was no official announcement regarding the change in policy, especially as Twitter was lauded for creating it in the first place and implementing it in January of 2020, during the peak of the pandemic when COVID-19 misinformation was rife on social media.

With Twitter now choosing to let unsubstantiated claims regarding the virus be spread freely on its platform, it will be interesting to see whether other platforms, like Facebook, will do the same.

Another worrying aspect to this story, as Bloomberg (paywall) recently reported, is that misinformation and other illicit content could soon be surging on the platform.

This as Musk reportedly let go of the team at Twitter responsible for fighting child sexual abuse material on the platform, which was part of widespread layoffs at the company shortly after the Tesla CEO took over as Chief Twit.

With said team now cut in half, Twitter may soon become a haven for exploitative content featuring children, which is one of the tasks that Musk labelled as a top priority that needs addressing only a few days ago.

Removing child exploitation is priority #1. Please reply in comments if you see anything that Twitter needs to address.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

With each passing day, it looks like Twitter continues to unravel.

[Image – Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash]