Twitter to block Covid ‘fake news’ spreaders

Twitter has announced to label Tweets that may contain misleading information around Covid vaccinations and will permanently suspend repeated offenders. The microblogging platform has introduced a strike system against such misleading tweets and five or more strikes will result in permanent suspension of the account.

“We believe the strike system will help to educate the public on our policies and further reduce the spread of potentially harmful and misleading information on Twitter, particularly for repeated moderate and high-severity violations of our rules,” the company said in a statement late on Monday.

Since introducing the Covid-19 guidance, Twitter said it has removed more than 8,400 Tweets and challenged 11.5 million accounts worldwide. While one strike will cause no account-level action, two strikes will lead to a 12-hour account lock; three strikes in another 12hour account lock; four strikes in a 7-day account lock and five or more strikes means permanent suspension of the account.

Labels will first be applied by Twitter team members when they determine content violates the platform's policy. “Our goal is to eventually use both automated and human review to address content that violates our Covid-19 vaccine misinformation rules,” Twitter said.

Twitter will begin with English-language content first and use this same process as it works to expand to other languages and cultural contexts over time.

Labels will appear in the user's set display language and may link to curated content and official public health information or the Twitter Rules.