Elon Musk has questioned Twitter’s policies around suppressing content, even polling its millions of followers on whether or not they believe the social media company “strictly adheres” to the concept of free speech.
Twitter is now taking a new stance and rolling out a new policy against disinformation that the company is calling its “crisis disinformation policy,” applicable during what it considers periods of “armed conflict, public health emergencies and disasters natural on a large scale”.
“In times of crisis, misleading information can undermine public confidence and cause further harm to already vulnerable communities,” Twitter. explained in a statement. Alongside our existing work to make reliable information more accessible during crisis events, this new approach will help slow our spread of more visible, misleading content, particularly that which could lead to serious harm .
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The policy is being implemented amid the escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine, although the company directly addressed it only once.
“While this first iteration is focused on international armed conflict, starting with the war in Ukraine, we plan to update and expand the policy to include additional forms of crisis,” the company said.
To adopt the policy, Twitter will cover some Tweets with the new warning that users will have to click to view the content. Warning Tweets will also not be promoted or amplified through user feeds or on the public Twitter page.
The company clarified that this content will not be completely removed in an effort to “mitigate the damage” without completely deleting the content.
I tweet was down just 30% year-over-year at the market close on Friday.
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