Even as COVID-19 cases proliferate in China and certain other areas of the world, Twitter has scaled back its misinformation policy to tackle fake news in the social media site.
Concerns have been raised about Twitter’s ability to combat misinformation after the company laid off half of its workers, including those responsible for content moderation, under new CEO Elon Musk.
An update on Twitter’s blog page said, “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.”
CNN was the first to report the change on Tuesday.
It was unclear at first what kinds of restrictions Twitter would eliminate, and the firm did not answer right away to a request for clarification.
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Twitter implemented a variety of measures in 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, including labels and warning messages on tweets containing disputed information about the health problem and a framework to have users delete tweets that promoted harmfully false claims related to vaccines.
Meta’s Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube used comparable security procedures that are currently in effect.
Since March 2021, Twitter has ceased enforcing its “civic integrity policy” for false statements related to the 2020 US presidential election.
On October 27, billionaire Musk purchased Twitter for $US44 billion ($A66 billion) and has moved swiftly to implement a number of product and staff changes.
On October 29th, Musk announced he would be forming a council with “widely diverse viewpoints” to oversee content moderation.
With AAP.
Jaw de Guzman is the content producer for Comms Room, a knowledge platform and website aimed at assisting the communications industry and its professionals.