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Twitter is taking a very firm stance on stopping the spread of COVID-19 misinformation.
On Monday (Mar.1), the company announced that it would start slapping labels on misleading tweets about the COVID-19 vaccine. If you’re a user who constantly posts misinformation about COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccine, Twitter will boot you from the service.
Twitter has introduced a new “strike system” which will give users warnings before a permanent banning is levied upon them. Twitter spoke about the new system in a blog post, stating, “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 further added.
According to the company, users will be notified when a COVID-19-related tweet is being labeled as misleading or needs to be removed, and that will count as a first strike as per Twitter’s new policy. Second and third strikes will earn you a 12-hour ban from using the service.
A fourth strike will see your account put on temporary suspension for seven days. A fifth and final strike gets your account permanently banned from Twitter.
Twitter started telling users late last year to delete tweets containing dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine claiming that the life-saving tool would cause harm to those who took it or was some form of government control. Ridiculous claims that the pandemic is a hoax and sharing false information about the vaccine’s adverse effects will earn you strikes from Twitter.
Since enacting this policy, Twitter has already scrubbed its service of more than 8,400 tweets and has sent notifications to 11.5 million accounts worldwide who have violated its COVID-19 information policy.
Twitter joins other online platforms, YouTube and Facebook, who also take similar actions to stop the spread of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine as vaccinations have begun to ramp up across the nation and worldwide.
Photo: NurPhoto / Getty
