Twitter announced a new measure to stamp out misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on the platform.
It will use its warning label system to identify those tweets that misinform on this topic.
New Twitter measure to eradicate misinformation about COVID-19
As shown in the illustrative images, Twitter will display a warning on those tweets containing false information about COVID-19 vaccines. The label mentions that the tweet may be misleading, and encourages users to seek information from official health agencies.
And if the user takes the action to share they will see a message encouraging them to get informed before sharing that content to maintain the platform as a place for reliable information. Of course, it will provide users with a link that will direct them to official agency pages.
So Twitter’s first step is to help users become aware of the content they share and their responsibility on the platform. However, Twitter will also take action if an account repeatedly shares erroneous information, even when warned about the content. To this end, they have established a penalty system based on the number of warnings.
From the second warning onwards, the account will be blocked for 12 hours. If the warnings go to five, the account will be blocked for 7 days. A last measure for the user to change their behavior before the account is permanently suspended if they accumulate more than 4 warnings.
Of course, the user will always be able to access the appeal process if they feel that Twitter made a mistake in rating their tweets. Twitter’s Help Center explains in detail what kind of COVID-19 related content violates the platform’s policies.
This dynamic warning labeling will begin to be implemented in English, and will then be rolled out to other languages.
