Following Facebook and YouTube, Twitter will remove misinformation about vaccines

Wednesday, Twitter Announced which will begin removing misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine starting next week. The company plans to remove bogus vaccine content it considers “the most harmful” and will later begin tagging other posts that could be misleading.

“In the context of a global pandemic, vaccine misinformation presents a significant and growing public health challenge, and we all have a role to play,” the company said in a blog post. “We are focused on mitigating misleading information that presents the greatest potential harm to people’s health and well-being.”

The Twitter announcement follows similar promises from Facebook and YouTube, which recently said they will remove false information related to Covid-19 vaccines. The announcement also comes after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

As the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine begins to be administered to healthcare workers and individuals in long-term care homes, vaccine-related misinformation has flourished online. For example, unproven narratives that the Covid-19 vaccine has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, or that the vaccine has a proven connection to a condition called Bell’s palsy, have garnered tens of thousands of mentions in the last week, based on the data collected. by Zignal Labs.

This surge in misinformation has exacerbated concerns that part of the US population will not be willing to receive the vaccine, or will delay it. Recent surveys suggest that while the majority of Americans say they will likely or definitely get vaccinated against Covid-19, many may not do so right away.

In a blog post, Twitter explained that it will take a two-pronged approach to vaccine content: eliminating the misinformation that does the most harm, and tagging content that is misleading or out of context. Posts that could be removed, the company says, include anything that suggests that a Covid-19 vaccine is part of a “deliberate conspiracy” or that falsely claims that Covid-19 is a hoax and therefore vaccines are not necessary. The company also said it would address vaccine-related misinformation more generally, including claims that have been “widely discredited about the impacts or adverse effects of receiving vaccines.”

A Twitter spokesperson told Recode that when someone posts this type of misinformation, the platform will hide that content from public view. The person who posted it can appeal the decision on Twitter or log in and remove that content before being allowed to post again from their account.

Beginning next year, Twitter will also begin adding tags to posts that the platform decides need more context, such as rumors, contested claims, or claims about the Covid-19 vaccine that are “incomplete.”

In October, YouTube announced that it planned to remove misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine and banned vaccine claims that went against what health experts and the World Health Organization said.

Earlier this month, Facebook said that under its policy requiring removal of content that could lead to “imminent physical harm,” it would also remove false information related to Covid-19 vaccines. For example, the company said it would remove content that says vaccines include microchips, a common and false conspiracy theory related to the Covid-19 vaccine. It is also removing posts that claim that “specific populations are being used without their consent to test the safety of the vaccine.”

Just a month ago, Twitter had told Recode that while it recognized the importance of its platform for public health, it was still working on how it would address content moderation around a Covid-19 vaccine. Twitter declined to comment on whether it worked with other social media companies in developing the policies announced today.

Throughout the pandemic, Twitter has used a sliding scale between posts that deserve a tag and posts that need to be removed, depending on how harmful that content may be. The company has also frequently used labels in posts that share misinformation about elections.

Twitter’s new rules on vaccine misinformation suggest the fight against this problem is likely to continue. In fact, many of the same accounts that have fueled other types of false claims, such as electoral misinformation, are now turning their attention to the Covid-19 vaccine, indicating a major challenge for social media platforms.

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