Twitter will ban users who spread the wrong information about the coronavirus pandemic and covid-19 vaccines under a new five-attack system, according to a new blog post on the social media company. Twitter prohibits all medical information that is “proven to be false or misleading and could lead to a significant risk of harm”.
“By using the strike system, we hope to educate people about why certain content violates our rules, so that they have an opportunity to better consider their behavior and its impact on public conversations,” wrote the Twitter Security Team at Monday.
“Individuals will be notified directly when a label or the removal of a required Tweet results in an additional application at the account level. Repeated violations of the COVID-19 policy are applied based on the number of warnings an account has accrued for policy violations, ”continued the blog post.
Twitter’s five-attack policy will apply as of today, as the company explains:
- A warning: no action at the account level
- Two caveats: account lockout for 12 hours
- Three warnings: account lockout for 12 hours
- Four warnings: account lockout for 7 days
- Five or more strokes: permanent suspension
Twitter’s new five-attack policy comes after the company announced in December that it would take further action to “protect public conversation” around covid-19, a disease that has infected more than 28.6 million Americans and killed more than 516,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Twitter says it has removed more than 8,400 tweets with covid-19 misinformation since December and that the company will use human moderators and machines to track tweets that violate Twitter rules.
“Machine learning and automated language processing take time to be effective. So we’ll start with English content first and use that same process as we work to expand to other languages and cultural contexts over time, ”said Twitter on his blog on Monday.
Strike systems have been used by platforms like YouTube as a way to regulate behavior, ensuring that people understand what rules have been broken and receive fair warning before they are banned forever.
One of the main criticisms of Facebook and Twitter over the years has been the lack of transparency about why certain users were banned and others were not. For example, David Duke, a former KKK Grand Wizard, was allowed to remain on the platform for 11 years before it was finally banned. And it is not clear what happened.
Currently, vaccines are being distributed to millions of Americans, raising hopes that life will soon return to normal, or some version of normal that resembles something like the year 2019, before the pandemic. Approximately 15% of Americans received at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine, according to NPR, an extremely positive sign for the future.
Will Twitter implement something like a five-attack policy for offenses other than covid-19 misinformation? This part is not clear. But, if you ask us, it’s a great idea.