Twitter Rolling Out A New ‘Crisis Misinformation’ Policy

Twitter is launching a new policy to combat “situations of armed conflict, public health emergencies, and large-scale natural disasters,” according to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Head of Safety & Integrity, in a blog post. The new policy announcement comes as Twitter is in the process of acquiring Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has made his views on ‘content moderation’ known through various tweets and posts. Musk has also stated that the deal with Twitter cannot be finalized until the platform confirms the number of bots or fake users.

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According to Twitter, “crises” are situations in which there is a widespread threat to life, physical safety, health, or basic subsistence. It goes on to say that it will rely on “verification from multiple credible, publicly available sources, including evidence from conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organizations, open-source investigators, journalists, and more” to determine whether a claim is misleading.

According to the blog, this will be a global policy that will “help to ensure viral misinformation isn’t amplified or recommended” by the platform during crises. As soon as Twitter discovers “evidence that a claim may be misleading, we will not amplify or recommend” this content across the platform.

New Crisis Misinformation Policy Tackles The Situations Of Armed Conflict

This includes displaying it on the app’s or website’s Home timeline, Search, and Explore sections. Twitter will also priorities “adding warning notices to highly visible tweets and tweets from high profile accounts. Such as state-affiliated media accounts, verified and official government accounts” that contain false information.

Tweets containing content that violates the crisis misinformation policy will be accompanied by a warning notice that reads. This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules on sharing false or misleading information. These information may cause harm to crisis-affected populations. Twitter has determined that this Tweet should remain available in order to preserve this content for accountability purposes.”

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What Happens When Twitter Adds A Warning Notice To A Piece Of Misinformation?

After clicking through the warning notice, users will still be able to see. The content, however, will not be amplified or recommended across the service. Furthermore, Twitter will remove the ability to like, retweet, or share that specific piece of content.

“We’ve discovered that not amplifying or recommending specific content, adding context through labels, and, in extreme cases, disabling engagement with the Tweets are effective ways to mitigate harm while still preserving speech and records of critical global events,” the blog post continues.

The first version of this policy is focused on international armed conflict. Beginning with the conflict in Ukraine, and Twitter intends to update. It will expand the policy to include additional forms of crisis. The policy will supplement our existing work in other global crises, such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and India,” the company stated.

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