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Twitter will delete tweets that spread harmful disinformation, starting with the Covid-19 vaccine, the company said – and from 2021, it will start tagging tweets that push conspiracy theories.
The move sees the company following Facebook and YouTube to tighten policies around the coronavirus vaccination as the rollout of the jab begins across the world.
“Starting next week, we will prioritize removing the most harmful misleading information,” the US company said in a blog post.
“And over the next few weeks, we’ll start tagging tweets with potentially misleading information about vaccines.”
Examples of messages that can be suppressed include false claims “which suggest that vaccines and vaccines are used to intentionally cause harm to populations or to control them”, and claim “that Covid-19 is not real or not serious, and therefore vaccinations are unnecessary ”.
Tweets that do not reach the level of potential harm will not be deleted, but may be tagged with authoritative public health information, the company said.
Examples of this type of complaint include unsubstantiated rumors, disputed complaints, as well as incomplete or out of context information about vaccines.
The labeling will have a visual appearance similar to the company’s notorious U.S. election labels, regularly placed on Donald Trump’s tweets in which he falsely claimed victory in the U.S. election.
Twitter said it would enforce the policy “using a combination of technology and human scrutiny.”
Confusedly, the company has no way for users to report misinformation about Covid, or misinformation about vaccines, despite the content being banned on the site.
Instead, Twitter says that users who believe a particular tweet violates company rules on the topic should report it for any other violation – such as “threat of harm” – and use the text box to. add that this is prohibited disinformation.
The move comes two weeks after Facebook tightened its own policy on Covid vaccines.
The wider social network will remove claims that reach the level of imminent physical harm, as well as claims that have been debunked by public health experts, even if they do not reach that level.
China’s TikTok network has also stepped up its vaccine disinformation policies, announcing on Tuesday that it has put in place policies prohibiting disinformation “that could harm an individual’s health or public safety in general.”
The company also said it will tag all vaccine videos with a link to “verifiable and authoritative sources of information.”
However, it is easier to develop such policies than to enforce them and during a parliamentary hearing on vaccine misinformation, TikTok was asked how one influencer in particular, Olivia Madison, managed to get 38,000 followers. while making extremely false claims about vaccination.
Madison, an American, describes herself as “pro life, pro guns, pro Trump”.
During a digital, culture, media and sport select committee hearing in parliament on Thursday, Scottish National Party MP John Nicolson said of Madison: ‘She is very beautiful and what she does is absolutely nasty.
If TikTok can’t pull someone off with that many fans, he said, “What are the odds that you’re getting rid of the smaller fry? I mean, this woman is shouting lies as publicly as she can in some very professionally produced videos. “
However, the company quickly made up for its oversight, banning Madison completely from the platform even before the hearing was over.
“It’s a shame it takes a special parliamentary committee hearing to get rid of this problem,” DCMS committee chairman Julian Knight told TikTok director Theo Bertram. “We can’t do it every time.”
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