Twitter has announced that updates to its COVID-19 policy will remove tweets that “incite people to action and cause widespread panic, social unrest or large-scale disorder” in response to recent vandalisation of critical 5G infrastructure.
An official tweet from the social media giant reads: “We have broadened our guidance on unverified claims that incite people to engage in harmful activity, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical 5G infrastructure or could lead to widespread panic, social unrest, or large-scale disorder.”
We have broadened our guidance on unverified claims that incite people to engage in harmful activity, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical 5G infrastructure, or could lead to widespread panic, social unrest, or large-scale disorder.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 22, 2020
“We’re prioritizing the removal of COVID-19 content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm,” says a Twitter spokesperson to TechCrunch. This comes shortly after more than 50 cell towers were attacked and damaged in the UK due to unfounded claims that 5G is to blame for the global coronavirus pandemic.
“Since introducing these new policies, we’ve removed more than 2,200 Tweets. [We have also] doubled down on tech, our automated systems have challenged more than 3.4 million accounts which were targeting discussions around COVID-19 with spammy or manipulative behaviours.”
And while that is certainly an impressive attack in the war against misinformation – Twitter continues to say that it “will not take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about COVID-19”.
This could leave the door for open for users to share 5G claims and misinformation that doesn’t quite “cause harm”.
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