Twitter starts campaign against COVID-19 misinformation by putting labels and ‘strike’ system [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Twitter announced on Monday that it would extend its efforts on targeting COVID-19 misinformation with labels and a strike system to apprehend violators.
• Other social media companies have also acted to fight the spreading of fake news in connection to the pandemic.
• The move came over concerns of the potential spread of anti-vaccination materials in social media.

In a bid to mitigate the spread of false information about COVID-19 vaccine, Twitter has expanded its use of disclaimer labels.

The effort, announced in a blog post on Monday, was made to build up and reinforce the company’s current coronavirus guidance. The scheme has already removed over 8,400 tweets and disputed about 11.5 million accounts globally.

Labels would be first monitored by human checkers, which would soon be handled by automated systems.

For the first offense, flagged users would not face any punishment. A 12-hour account lock would be given for strike two, and a 24-hour lock for strike three. Should a user reach four strikes, a seven-day account lock would be enforced. Permanent shutdown of account would be implemented for five and succeeding continuous violations. 

Twitter said that it will start monitoring English-based language and will work over time to expand to other languages and cultural contexts.

“We believe the strike system will help to educate the public on our policies and further reduce the spread of potentially harmful and misleading information on Twitter, particularly for repeated moderate and high-severity violations of our rules,” the company said.

Currently studying the psychology of fake news, Vanderbilt University professor Lisa Fazio said that the action was a “move in the right direction.”

“As always, the devil is in the details. The success of the policy will depend on how consistently it is applied, how accurately it is applied, and how well the appeals process works,” she said.

As a new policy, users cannot report fellow users for spreading fake COVID news even if the content is against the company’s guidance. Rather, users who wanted to report such tweet should report it as another violation, such as “threatening harm” and make use of the text box to include a disclaimer.

Facebook, meanwhile, started prohibiting vaccine misinformation in early February. The company is utilizing a strike system that suspends the accounts of violators for posting bogus information and perpetually banning accounts with multiple offenses.

In the early stage of the pandemic, social media companies started including labels and links to any COVID-19 related information. On Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, using the term ‘COVID-19’ in a post would be followed with a warning label and an accurate information link by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last December, Twitter began putting more labels with further details to ‘challenged’ tweets regarding COVID-19. The company is currently concentrating on protecting verified information about vaccines. They also launched a strike system that “determines when further enforcement action is necessary.”

The move came as there were growing concerns about social media dissemination of anti-vaccination propaganda.

Source: The Guardian