Twitter testing new process for reporting COVID-19 misinformation
What's the story
Microblogging platform Twitter has announced that its users in the US, Australia, and South Korea will be able to report COVID-19 and election-related misinformation through the conventional process of reporting other kinds of unwanted content.
This change is expected to be tested for a few months in these markets before Twitter rolls out the change to other countries.
Here are more details.
The old way
Previously, misinformation was automatically flagged by Twitter's content moderation system
Twitter introduced COVID-19 misinformation labels in May 2020. These were specially introduced for the pandemic and at the time, Twitter said that its automated content moderation system would flag the misleading tweets but they won't be removed automatically.
The company had said that it would "require people to remove tweets" themselves.
The new experimental system combines COVID-19 misinformation reporting with the existing reporting system.
The new way
COVID-19 misinformation reporting now combined with other objectionable content reporting
From the top right-hand side of every tweet, users can open a menu and choose to report the tweet for being misleading.
Users will reportedly be prompted to specify if the content is political, health-related, or falls into another category.
The politics category includes more specific types of misinformation like election-related content. The category for health also has a COVID-19-specific misinformation option.
Accelerators
Data collected will help decide about rolling out changes globally
Twitter clarified that each and every report received will not be scrutinized manually. However, data obtained during the test will help Twitter determine how to expand the feature to global markets in the coming weeks and months.
Twitter's move appears to be accelerated by the Joe Biden administration's stronger stance on COVID-19 misinformation amid growing cases of new variants of the virus.
Consequences
Social media platforms 'killing' people with misinformation: President Biden
In July, Biden told reporters that social media platforms like Facebook were "killing people" with vaccine misinformation.
Further, the US Surgeon General's office published a report about new ways in which platforms can combat COVID-19 misinformation.
The report called for consequences for people that repeatedly violate the platform's rules and for Facebook and Twitter to rework their algorithms to prevent amplification of misinformation.