On Thursday, Twitter introduced a brand new coverage for coping with incorrect information all through a duration of disaster, setting up new requirements for gating or blockading the promotion of positive tweets if they’re noticed as spreading incorrect information.
“Content material moderation is extra than simply leaving up or taking down content material,” defined Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of protection and integrity, in a blog post detailing the new policy, “and we’ve expanded the variability of movements we would possibly take to verify they’re proportionate to the severity of the prospective hurt.”
The brand new coverage places specific scrutiny on false reporting of occasions, false allegations involving guns or use of power, or broader incorrect information referring to atrocities or global reaction.
Hoax tweets and different incorrect information continuously go viral during emergencies, as customers rush to proportion unverified data. The sheer velocity of occasions makes it tough to enforce standard verification or fact-checking methods, developing a vital problem for moderators.
Beneath the brand new coverage, tweets categorized as incorrect information is not going to essentially be deleted or banned; as a substitute, Twitter will upload a caution label requiring customers to click on a button earlier than the tweet may also be displayed (very similar to the prevailing labels for specific imagery). The tweets may also be blocked from algorithmic promotion.
The more potent requirements are supposed to be restricted to express occasions. Twitter will to begin with follow the coverage to content material regarding the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, however the corporate expects to use the principles to all rising crises going ahead. For the needs of the coverage, disaster is outlined as “scenarios in which there’s a well-liked risk to existence, bodily protection, well being, or elementary subsistence.”
The coverage comes at a mild time for Twitter, with the corporate’s authorized sale to Elon Musk in a complicated limbo. Musk has pledged to cut back moderation methods on the corporate in want of a maximalist view of free speech. However with Musk claiming the deal is on hold pending a bot investigation, it’s unclear when or how his concepts will probably be applied.
