
Twitter Reverses COVID's Anti-misinformation Guidelines
CIO Review APAC | Friday, December 02, 2022

The move also comes amid concerns about Twitter's ability to fight misinformation after it let go of about half of its staff, including those involved in content moderation, under new boss Elon Musk.
FREMONT, CA:Twitter Inc. has reversed a policy intended to address Covid-19 misinformation on the social media site, raising the possibility of an increase in false claims even as cases rise in China and other countries.
The decision was made in light of worries about Twitter's capacity to combat misinformation following the termination of almost half of its employees, including those in charge of content moderation, under new CEO Elon Musk.
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Twitter is no longer enforcing the Covid-19 false information policy. It did not immediately react to a request for more information, and it was unclear exactly which policies the business would discontinue. Twitter implemented a variety of safeguards at the start of COVID in 2020, including labels and warning messages on tweets with disputed material about the health problem and a framework to require users to remove tweets that promoted harmfully inaccurate claims about vaccines. Similar safeguards were used by the Facebook and YouTube services owned by Meta Platforms Inc.
Twitter claimed at the beginning of this year that as of March 2021, it had stopped implementing a civic integrity standard about false information concerning the 2020 US presidential election. Musk promptly started several adjustments to the product and employees after purchasing Twitter on October 27 for USD 44 billion. On October 29, Musk announced that a content moderation council with widely different opinions would be established.
Mr Musk moved rapidly to implement several staffing and platform changes. A content moderation council with widely different opinions would be established. Last year, the decision to permanently suspend its most famous user, former US president Donald Trump, was one of several pivotal decisions. 2,200 people worldwide were working on content filtering before Musk became CEO of Twitter.
Musk claimed that following the takeover, the corporate directory had been disabled. Therefore, he could not recall the number. The basis for his resignation: under Musk, Twitter has started veering away from its adherence to written and publicly visible policies and toward content judgments made by its new owner.
He claimed that despite recommendations and warnings from the trust and safety team, the Twitter Blue premium subscription overhaul, which would have allowed users to pay for a verified checkmark on their account, was launched. Spammers posing as prominent publicly traded corporations, including Eli Lilly, Nestle, and Lockheed Martin, quickly attacked the launch.
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