After the Covid crisis which favored the explosion of false information, Twitter decided to go on the offensive. The social network announced on Thursday that it would put warnings on certain obviously misleading messages on the conflict in Ukraine.
To read the tweets deemed problematic, you will first have to click on a message announcing that spreading false or misleading information can have harmful consequences on people’s real lives, explained the official in charge of integrity issues on the platform, Yoel Roth, in a post. Warnings will be added to tweets that are more visible or from accounts such as media affiliated with governments or government entities. In addition, it will not be possible to “like”, retweet or share these messages.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: social networks, VPNs, blogs… how does counter-information work in Russia?
“To determine whether claims are misleading, we require verification of several credible and publicly available sources, including evidence from conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organizations, individuals conducting public source investigations into Internet, journalists, etc. “, detailed Yoel Roth. Twitter plans to target, for example, tweets that misrepresent the situation on the ground of a conflict or report false allegations about the use of force, war crimes or humanitarian response.
“Promote Credible Information”
As soon as Twitter has determined that a message is false, the platform will also make sure not to automatically accelerate its spread. The goal is to “promote credible and authoritative information” and to ensure that “viral misinformation is not amplified or endorsed” by Twitter’s algorithms, the official said.
This new policy will guide the group’s efforts in the event of armed conflict, emergency health situations or major natural disasters, starting with the war in Ukraine. The Californian group had already taken measures to try to reduce the circulation of official Russian propaganda on the social network, for example by blocking the accounts of Russian media RT and Sputnik in the European Union or by no longer “recommending” the accounts Russian government to users.
This new policy is announced at a time when the social network is about to be bought by Elon Musk, who has said he wants to strengthen freedom of expression on the platform by limiting content moderation and who recently asked for guarantees on the fake accounts.
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