Twitter will ban users from spreading misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and covid-19 vaccines under a new five-strike system, according to a new post on the social media company’s blog. Twitter prohibits any medical information that is “demonstrably false or misleading and could pose a significant risk of harm.”
“By using the strike system, we hope to educate people about why certain content violates our rules so that they have a chance to further consider their behavior and impact on public conversation,” he wrote. Twitter security team Monday.
“People will be notified directly when a tag or mandatory deletion of tweets results in an additional application of the account level. Repeated violations of the COVID-19 policy apply based on the number of alerts you have accumulated. an account for policy violations, “the blog post continued.
Twitter’s five-strike policy will take effect today, as the company explains:
- A wake-up call: no account-level action
- Two strikes: 12-hour account lockout
- Three strikes: 12-hour account lockout
- Four touches of attention: 7-day account lockout
- Five or more strikes: permanent suspension
Twitter’s new five-strike policy comes after the company announced in December that it would take further action to “protect public conversation” over covid-19, a disease that has infected more than 28.6 million Americans and killed more than 516,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Twitter says it has removed more than 8,400 tweets with covid-19 misinformation since December and the company will use both human moderators and machines to track tweets that violate Twitter rules.
“Machine learning and automated language processing need time to be effective. As such, we will first start with English content and use this same process as we work to expand into other languages and cultural contexts over time, ”Twitter said in its blog post Monday.
Platforms like YouTube have used “wake-up” systems as a way to regulate behavior by making sure people understand what rules they’ve broken and receive a warning just before they’re banished forever.
One of the main criticisms on Facebook and Twitter over the years has been the lack of transparency about why users have been banned and others not. For example, David Duke, a former Grand Magician of the KKK, was you are allowed to stay on the platform for 11 years before he was finally banned. And it’s not clear what he finally did.
Vaccines are currently being rolled out to millions of Americans, raising hopes that life will soon return to normal, or some version of normalcy that resembles 2019, before the pandemic arrives. About 15% of Americans have received at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine, according to NPR, a tremendously positive signal for the future.
Will Twitter post something like a five-strike policy for other infractions beyond covid-19 misinformation? This part is not clear. But, if you ask us it’s a great idea.