Fact Check: Did Twitter Scrap Its Covid-19 Misinformation Restrictions?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

TRUE!

Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter has been surrounded by allegations that his changes to the platform will foster misinformation and misleading narratives across the popular social media site.

Musk, who has already taken actions to reinstate a number of controversial public figures whose accounts were previously suspended, has repeatedly referenced his desire to increase "free speech" on the platform.

Now, it appears that Twitter may have taken this one step further by removing some of its COVID-19 content policies that helped police misleading narratives during the pandemic.

Multiple tweets posted on November 29, 2022, claim that Twitter has removed its COVID-19 misinformation policy, a set of rules for posting Coronavirus-related content on the social media platform.

And the rest at Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-twitter-scrap-its-covid-19-misinformation-restrictions-1763022

[Emrys]

1. COVID misinformation has been rife on Twitter all along, and Twitter's been fighting a losing battle

inasmuch as it's been noticeably fighting at all (the figures in the article suggest it has, but it's like putting a cork in a firehose).

I've reported quite a few accounts like that when I've come across them in the past couple of years.

Some of them were your run-of-the-mill antivaccers with their own little echo chambers which they spilled out of periodically. Reporting them was pretty much a waste of time, so muting or blocking was the best recourse unless you really wanted to spend your time following their repetitive bilge.

Other were spammers or spambots that would crop up at the tail ends of threads or on random hashtag searches, advertising the like of fake vaccination certificates or whatever. I reported quite a few of those, but there wasn't really a category that fit, so it was usually under the blanket of "encouraging self-harm" or spamming, with mixed results.

Some choose to beat back at such propaganda, others just ignore it. I don't know how many people there are out there that remain to be convinced and are convinceable one way or another.

[gratuitous]

2. Enforcing the restrictions requires a LOT of people

And Sloe Munk got rid of so many of the people doing that job that there's no point in retaining the restrictions. Might as well try use a tennis racket to stop the tide from coming in.

[Tree-Hugger]

3. Misinformation was widespread before Musk

Covid Misinformation, antivax BS, and conspiracy theories have flourished on Twitter since the pandemic began. Most posts did not have fact checks and it was rare for tweets I reported for blantant misinformation to be removed.