Twitter said it would crack down on accounts that repeatedly publish incorrect information about Covid-19 vaccines.
The social media platform said it would not hesitate to permanently suspend those who post blatantly misleading information about the pandemic and the various vaccines that were created to combat it, and who will label tweets to better inform users about it.
Similar to the line that followed ex-President Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of electoral fraud following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election in the United States.
They will use a combination of automated and human reviewers to identify and label spurious posts about coronavirus vaccines.
Those who choose to post dubious information on multiple occasions may queue for a seven-day ban initially, but those who receive five or more ‘notices’ will be removed from the social media platform.
In a press release, they wrote: “As health officials deepen their understanding of COVID-19 and vaccination programs around the world, we will continue to expand on the most current, up-to-date and reliable information.”
This latest move follows their announcement in December last year that misinformation around vaccines would be removed from the platform.
There is a growing trend of skepticism about vaccines worldwide, with more than 15% of Americans saying that they ‘definitely would not’ receive one of the three vaccines offered to them in a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
So far, the United States has administered nearly 77 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines that have been approved, and a third single dose injection from Johnson & Johnson was approved on Saturday.
The Chief Medical Adviser to the President of the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that up to 90 percent of the US population must be vaccinated to obtain collective immunity.
This means that there is a long way to go and the number of people planning to refuse a jab is increasing.
That’s probably why Twitter decided to intervene to remove some of the misleading information that could be shaking people’s opinions online.
The most comprehensive study in the UK showed that 72 percent of people are willing to be vaccinated, with 16 percent still very unsafe and 12 percent strongly hesitant to receive vaccines.
Oxford University asked 5,114 people how they would feel about getting an NHS Covid-19 vaccine, and the results were published in the journal Psychological Medicine.