Twitter’s long-term effort to combat COVID-19 misinformation is over, at least for now. As Twitter and CNN users have noticed, the social media company quietly updated its transparency site to reveal that it stopped enforcing its COVID misinformation policy on November 23. It’s unclear whether the company will fix all accounts banned for sharing incorrect data as part of Elon Musk’s planned amnesty, but it does mean the company probably won’t suspend other users or remove content that includes lies about the coronavirus or vaccines. .
Twitter began cracking down on misinformation about COVID-19 in January 2020, when the disease began spreading around the world. Since then, the social network has banned more than 11,200 accounts, removed more than 97,600 examples of fake content and “challenged” 11. 7 million accounts through efforts such as caution tags. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy even cited the company’s policy as an example of how other tech platforms can fight false medical claims.
The company has well disbanded its communications team and is not available for comment. However, Musk has expressed opposition to COVID-19 bans and some protective measures. Tesla defied the first pandemic closures by keeping factories open despite shelter-in-house orders in Musk also insisted during an April 2020 earnings call that those lockdowns were “forcibly imprisoning people” and threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response. Occupiers of the mandate who have closed the Canadian capital of Ottawa for weeks. Enable browser notifications to get the latest alerts from Engadget You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu. Now noOnOn
The news comes as Twitter is cutting back on other groups committed to detecting harmful behavior. Bloomberg’s resources say Musk has hollowed out the team committed to combating child sexual abuse (CSAM) as part of his large-scale layoffs, reducing it from about 20 specialists to fewer. Contacts say the unit was already tense before, but is now “overwhelmed” despite Musk’s claim that fighting child exploitation is “priority number 1. “Get rid of it: The UK’s online safety bill allows regulators to fine corporations if they don’t act temporarily to remove offensive content.
The discounts may also have limited Twitter’s ability to fend off bots and other fake accounts. The tech giant has struggled to combat spam that obfuscates news of Chinese protests after Musk fired Twitter’s anti-propaganda team, for example.