(Newser)
– Twitter is expanding its system of misinformation warning labels and conspiracy theories to apply to posts about coronavirus vaccines. A blog post on Monday set the new rules, Wall Street Journal reports. Like its election information practice, the policy will add violations to users, calling every station that spreads vaccine misinformation strike. The first strike will bring a warning, the fifth a permanent suspension, and the intermediate violations will cause the accounts to be blocked for hours or days. Users can appeal their punishment. “By using the strike system, we hope to educate people about why certain content violates our rules so that they can continue to consider their behavior and their impact on public conversation.” said the company’s posting. Twitter said it deleted more than 8,400 tweets and sparked 11.5 million accounts worldwide in December, when it announced it would eliminate vaccine misinformation, on USA Today.
Implementation will begin with employees slapping labels on tweets that are not based on reliable research or reporting. Then, automated tools will have the idea and start labeling similar content. “Our goal is to ultimately use both automatic and human review to address content that violates our COVID-19 vaccine misinformation rules,” the company said. “Machine learning and language processing take time to be effective.” Labels could link to public health information or cleaned content. Tweets written in English will be reviewed first. Facebook said last month that it removed 12 million content from Facebook and Instagram that violated its coronavirus misinformation rules. Executive Director Jack Dorsey said last week that Twitter intends to make content moderation more transparent diary. “We agree that a lot of people don’t trust us,” he said. (Twitter plans other changes.)