Twitter Starts Labeling Tweets Containing Wrong Information Regarding COVID-19

JAKARTA - Social media Twitter is again fighting misinformation on posts about COVID-19 or the coronavirus. This is done by applying warnings and labels to tweets that contain false information.

Compiled from CNN International, through the Twitter blog page, it has collaborated with a number of fact-finding agencies to deal with uploading content related to COVID-19. Because it is not uncommon for netizens to share false information on this social media platform.

Citizens can access this feature through a panel that says "Get facts about Covid-19." Later, users can click on the label and be taken to a page containing official and credible information about the global pandemic.

"The warning can be retroactive to previous tweets. Twitter will not directly check or name fake tweets on the site," said Twitter's senior global public policy strategist Nick Pickles.

Later Twitter will provide labels for posts deemed to convey false information. The President of the United States (US) Donald Trump is no exception. You could say Trump is the most productive head of state tweeting.

Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!

- Donald J. Trump (realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2020

"This label will apply to anyone who shares misleading information that meets the requirements of our policies, including world leaders," tweeted Twitter's head of integrity, Yoel Roth in response to a question about how the policy would apply to Trump and other elected officials.

The warning label feature will direct users to curated tweets, official public health websites, or verified news articles.

"People don't want us to play a role in deciding for them what is right and what isn't right, but they want people to play a much stronger role in providing context," Pickles added.

This label update is similar to that of rival Facebook, which says it doesn't want to be a determinant of the truth, but to set third-party fact-checkers to review the lies on its website.

One example of a tweet tagged on Twitter includes a claim about the origins of COVID-19, which remains unknown. Conspiracy theories about how the virus started spread across social media for months. Twitter will continue to delete COVID-19 tweets that pose a threat to the safety of an individual or group, along with efforts to instigate mass violence or widespread unrest.

Not only Twitter and Facebook, technology giants Google, YouTube and Instagram have also responded to the global spread of misinformation on their social media platforms.