Twitter announced on Monday that it will label tweets with potentially misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines and introduce an alert system that could lead to permanent account suspension.
The big picture: Technology companies are taking an increasingly aggressive stance against users attempting to share misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines on their platforms.
- Facebook announced in February that it would take action against misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.
- YouTube announced last October that it would remove videos with misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. YouTube has a similar warning policy for accounts that break the rules.
Details: The platform will start applying the labels on Monday, first using human assessment and eventually using automated tools as well.
- Labels can link to curated content about vaccines and official public health information.
- Individuals will be notified if their tweet has resulted in a warning. Users get five warnings and the penalty level ranges from no action to varying lengths of account lockouts to total suspension. Users can lodge an objection.
What they say: “Our goal with these product interventions is to provide people with additional context and authoritative information about COVID-19, ” the company wrote in a statement. blog post.
- “By using the alert system, we hope to teach people why certain content is breaking our rules, so they have the opportunity to further consider their behavior and their impact on the public conversation.”