Twitter rolls out policy on misinformation in a crisis

Twitter is rolling out a crisis misinformation policy during periods of crisis, including situations of armed conflict, public health emergencies, and large-scale natural disasters, the company said in a blog post. 

Twitter will require verification from credible, public sources, including conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organisations, open-source investigators, and journalists, to determine misleading claims. If the microblogging site finds a misleading tweet, it will slap a warning and disable likes, retweets and shares.

Twitter will also prevent those tweets from surfacing on the home page, search and explore.

The platform will retain the tweet for accountability purposes, and users will have to click through the warning to view the tweet, according to the blog post. Twitter will prioritise adding warning notices to viral tweets from high profile accounts, which include verified users, state-affiliated media and government accounts. 

Some tweet samples that might be flagged under the policy listed in the blog post include false coverage or event reporting, false allegations of war crimes or use of weapons and misinformation about international community response, sanctions, and defensive operations. Personal anecdotes and strong commentary do not fall within the scope of this policy, the company said. 

Published on

May 20, 2022