Twitter announced Monday that it will start labeling tweets sharing misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines. The labels contain links to relevant information from official bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Twitter plans to enforce a five-strike system for repeat offenders that could lead to closed accounts and permanent suspension.
The new labels are similar to Facebook’s anti-misinformation banners, or the labels that Twitter started deploying early in the pandemic. It appears as text under misleading tweets, with links to information from official sources or Twitter’s rules. Twitter says it applies these labels through a combination of human and automated review systems and first starts with the English-language content.
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Twitter has specific criteria for labeling COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy, but in general the company targets five categories of false or misleading information:
- Incorrect information about the nature of the virus
- Incorrect information about the effectiveness of treatments and preventive measures
- Incorrect information about regulations, restrictions and exemptions regarding health advice
- Incorrect information about the presence of the virus and the risk of infection or death
- Misleading commitments (for example, claiming to be a doctor or public health official)
Labels are also used for the new strike system for COVID-19 misinformation. A harmful, tagged tweet counts as one strike. If Twitter determines that the misinformation is particularly dangerous in questioning COVID-19 treatments and calls for a greater conspiracy with the virus (such as the idea that vaccines contain microchips to detect people), the company could also remove the tweet , which counts as two strikes. From there, account level drops, causing different actions from Twitter.
Adding labels was part of the larger strategy to combat misinformation that Twitter used during the 2020 election, and added labels to the tweets of politicians – including the former president – when it contained inaccurate information. Although the labels seem useful, they do not necessarily prevent people from sharing the information. Holding actual punishment like a suspension until there were five bad tweets also means that misinformation can only be spread with a text as a warning.
You can see the different penalties from Twitter for the different number of strikes below:
- One strike: no account-level action
- Two strikes: 12-hour account lock
- Three strikes: 12 hour account lock
- Four strikes: 7-day account lock
- Five or more strikes: permanent suspension