Twitter says it wants to fight coronavirus misinformation on your timeline. Here’s how
Social media giant Twitter has joined Facebook in helping quash misleading or disputed information related to the coronavirus.
Twitter announced Monday it will begin labeling tweets that contain false coronavirus information. The label will read, “Get the facts about COVID-19” and clicking on it will direct users to a Twitter-curated page or external page with verified information related to the tweet.
“Depending on the propensity for harm and type of misleading information, warnings may also be applied to a tweet,” Twitter announced Monday. “These warnings will inform people that the information in the tweet conflicts with public health experts’ guidance before they view it.”
Twitter said it will take action against statements that have been confirmed to be false by experts in the field, statements in which the truthfulness or credibility is contested and statements containing information that is unconfirmed.
Yoel Roth, head of site integrity at Twitter, said the labels will provide extra context and allow users to come to their own judgments with the additional information, according to NBC News.
“People don’t want us to play the role of deciding for them what’s true and what’s not true but they do want people to play a much stronger role providing context,” Nick Pickles, Twitter’s global senior strategist for public policy, said, according to the Associated Press.
President Donald Trump and other public officials “are subject to the warning labels,” NPR reported.
Twitter will continue to remove coronavirus tweets that pose a safety threat, according to the Associated Press.
Current tweets that contain theories or speculations about the origins of coronavirus have been labeled, according to NPR.
“Our goal is to make it easy to find credible information on Twitter and to limit the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content,” Twitter wrote.
Last month, Facebook announced it would start letting users know when they comment or share a post containing COVID-19 falsehoods.