Twitter Error That Failed To Control Viral Tweets About COVID-19

Twitter illustration of COVID-19 (unsplash)

JAKARTA - An adverse event occurred again. Twitter failed to control the super-spreader from misinformation (disinformation) related to the COVID-19 outbreak on its platform. This disinformation is thought to have been shared with 3 million Twitter users.

According to an Engadget report from NewsGuard, Friday, May 8, dozens of disinformation posts regarding COVID-19 came from verified accounts with more than 100,000 followers. Some of them even have 3 million followers.

Not a few posts from these accounts, tweet wrong information about treatment or healing that is not yet known for sure. In fact, there were also many posts touting conspiracy theories such as linking 5G technology with the coronavirus, although in most cases this did not violate Twitter's rules.

"We prioritize removing content when we have a call to action that could potentially cause harm. As we said earlier, we will not take any enforcement action on any Tweets that contain incomplete or contentious information about COVID-19," said a Twitter spokeswoman. .

Apart from Twitter, social media networks Facebook and YouTube have all introduced new policies to curb the spread of fake news and disinformation related to COVID-19. Because this information often causes panic in the midst of handling the corona pandemic quarantine.

Twitter is of course being asked to fight to curb false health information which experts claim is life-threatening. Because of this information, many are spreading how to make a vaccine to treat COVID-19.

These viral tweets have also received a lot of criticism from medical activists and health experts. They asked social media companies not to provide space for disinformation content to be spread widely.

"We call on the technology giants to take immediate systemic action to stem the flow of erroneous health information and a triggered public health crisis," the letter said.

They also urge social media platforms to downgrade such content in users' feeds and provide correction tools for users who have seen malicious errors.

Previously, Facebook has also been criticized for spreading misinformation on its platform. According to records from the University of Oxford fact-checking agency, found that 60 percent of the information circulating on social media is false and false.

Some news circulating on Twitter, conveyed a fake study claiming that hydroxychloroquine has a 100 percent success rate as a treatment for COVID-19. Not only that, the use of chlorine dioxide, licorice root, and zinc is also considered to be a panacea for curing viruses.