Health
Twitter Expands Coronavirus Safety Guidance on Unverified Claims
Twitter expanded its coronavirus safety guidance on what they consider “unverified claims” last Wednesday. This expansion moves to include posts it deems “could lead to widespread panic, social unrest or large-scale disorder.”
Fox Business reported that this update is based on the March 27th guidance from Twitter. The said guidelines mentioned that it will “require people to remove tweets” that contain certain “unverified claims.”
Platforms like Facebook and Eventbrite have already started removing events that encourage people to defy social distancing regulations.
Now, Twitter has widened its guidance on claims that are unverified. This will effectively “incite people to engage in harmful activity, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical 5G infrastructure, or could lead to widespread panic, social unrest or large-scale disorder,” Twitter said in a tweet.
Twitter removing #coronavirus tweets it deems could trigger 'social unrest' https://t.co/UOPIBqa6KZ #covid19
— Orange Backpack (@OrangeTWD) April 25, 2020
Fox Business also explained that Twitter’s mention of 5G wireless infrastructure refers to a popular internet conspiracy theory. It links 5G technology with the coronavirus. It made those who don't know better, do destructive thing such as burning down cell towers.
Examples of tweets that Twitter would remove under its new policies include: “‘The National Guard just announced that no more shipments of food will be arriving for two months — run to the grocery store ASAP and buy everything' and ‘5G causes coronavirus — go destroy the cell towers in your neighborhood!'”
In another Wednesday tweet, Twitter said: “Since introducing our updated policies on March 18, we’ve removed over 2,230 Tweets containing misleading and potentially harmful content. Our automated systems have challenged more than 3.4 million accounts targeting manipulative discussions around COVID-19.”
According to a spokesperson, the company will not remove every tweet that has “disputed or incomplete” information about the virus. However, it is “prioritizing the removal of COVID-19 content” which can potentially cause harm.