In order to restrain the spread of false information, Twitter has updated its policies on COVID-19 to remove tweets that may lead people to engage in harmful activity.
Harmful activity in the sense that could lead to panic, large-scale disorder, or scenarios (according to Twitter) such as “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” or “5G causes coronavirus — go destroy the cell towers in your neighborhood!
According to a blog post by Twitter, “We’ll continue to prioritize removing content when it has a clear call to action that could directly pose a risk to people’s health or well-being, but we want to make it clear that we will not be able to take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about COVID-19. This is not meant to limit good faith discussion or expressing hope about ongoing studies related to potential medical interventions that show promise.”
Twitter says it has also removed over 2,230 tweets with misleading content since updating policies regarding COVID-19 content in March.
Other tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube have also pledged to fight COVID-19 related information.
