As of September 2022, Twitter had challenged 11.72 million accounts, suspended 11,230 accounts, and removed over 97,674 pieces of misleading content related to COVID-19 worldwide.
Today? It’s not doing anything.
As an update on the company’s COVID-19 misinformation report webpage notes:
Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.
Whether this is because Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk doesn’t believe that combatting COVID-19 misinformation is important, or because so many of the staff who would have moderated the content have left the company since Musk took over, or (most likely) both… is left up to the reader to decide.
But whatever explanation, it surely cannot be a good thing.
As one Twitter user put it, the change “will literally kill people”.
Twitter has quietly changed their policies to allow COVID-19 misinformation. This change will literally kill people.https://t.co/qtNS6Xeq7A pic.twitter.com/8AEXiAPS9V
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) November 29, 2022
Meanwhile, the media reports that the team at Twitter responsible for tackling child sexual abuse content is on its last legs.
I find it hard to see how any of this is going to make Twitter more attractive to advertisers.
Further reading: “Twitter has stopped enforcing its covid misinformation policies” – The Verge.
