Twitter will label the misinformation of the COVID-19 vaccine and apply an attack system

Twitter will label the misinformation of the COVID-19 vaccine and apply an attack system

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Twitter announced on Monday that it will start tagging tweets who share misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines. The labels will include links to relevant information from official bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Twitter’s plans to apply a system of five attacks for repeat offenders, which can lead to account blocking and permanent suspension.

The new labels are similar to Facebook’s anti-misinformation banners or to the labels that Twitter started rolling out at the beginning of the pandemic. They appear as text under deceptive tweets, with links to information from official sources or Twitter rules. Twitter says it applies these labels through a combination of human and automated review systems and is starting to launch with English content.

An example of a labeled tweet.
Image: Twitter

Twitter has specific criteria for labeling in its COVID-19 misleading information policy, but generally, the company targets five categories of false or misleading information:

  • Misinformation about the nature of the virus
  • Misinformation about the effectiveness of treatments and preventive measures
  • Misinformation about regulations, restrictions and exemptions in association with health warnings
  • Misinformation about the prevalence of the virus and the risk of infection or death
  • Misleading affiliations (for example, claiming to be a doctor or public health worker)

The tags also feed into the new strike system for incorrect COVID-19 information. A harmful labeled tweet counts as a warning. If Twitter determines that misinformation is particularly dangerous in its questioning of COVID-19 treatments and invokes a larger conspiracy linked to the virus (such as the idea that vaccines include microchips to track people), the company can also delete the tweet, which counts as two strikes. Thereafter, account-level warnings are accumulated, triggering different Twitter actions.

Adding labels has been part of a larger strategy to combat the misinformation that Twitter used during the 2020 election, adding labels to tweets by politicians – including the former president – when they included inaccurate information. While labels seem useful, they do not necessarily prevent people from sharing information. Maintaining a real punishment, like a suspension, until there are five bad tweets also means that misinformation can spread with just one text as a warning.

You can see the various Twitter punishments for the different numbers of strikes below:

  • 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

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