On Thursday, Twitter announced a new policy for dealing with misinformation in times of crisis, establishing new standards to gate or block certain tweets if they are deemed to be spreading misinformation.
“Content moderation is more than just leaving or removing content,” explained Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of security and integrity, in a blog post detailing the new policy. commensurate with the severity.
The new policy specifically examines false reporting of events, false allegations involving weapons or the use of force, or broader misinformation about atrocities or the international response.
In emergencies, hoax-style tweets and other misinformation often go viral as users rush to share unverified information. Due to the speed at which events are happening, it is difficult to implement normal verification or fact-checking systems, which creates a huge challenge for auditors.
Under the new policy, tweets classified as misinformation will not necessarily be removed or banned; instead, Twitter will add a warning label that requires users to click a button (similar to the existing explicit image label) before showing the tweet ). These tweets will also be blocked from being promoted in the algorithm.
A stricter standard means limited to specific events. Twitter will initially apply the policy to content about Russia’s ongoing incursion into Ukraine, but the company hopes to apply the rules to all emerging crises in the future. For the purposes of the policy, a crisis is defined as a “situation that poses a broad threat to life, personal safety, health or basic life”.
The policy comes at a delicate time for Twitter, with the company’s approved sale to Elon Musk in a chaotic stalemate. Musk has pledged to scale back the company’s governance system in favor of a maximum view of free speech. But with Musk claiming the deal was on hold while he waited for spam or fake account calculations, it was unclear when or how his idea would be implemented.