Twitter will ban users who spread false information about COVID-19 vaccines

Twitter has been very eventful with enforcing its policies lately—from labelling election misinformation tweets to banning the account of President Trump—and it seeks to further control the platform by introducing a new '5-life' strike system but this time to limit the spread of misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccination.

Image: Twitter

From today, Twitter will begin to flag tweets with “misleading information”, by adding a label just like it did for the election misinformation—but with description "Find out why health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines safe for most people." Twitter also intends to limit the reach of these tweets by disabling likes, retweets and replies for them.

There will also be stricter penalties for accounts that repeatedly spread these misinformation. An account will receive "1 strike" for such a tweet and a 5th strike will attract a permanent suspension for that account. Here are the penalties for twitter's new strike system: 

• 1 strike: No account-level action
• 2 strikes: 12-hour account lock
• 3 strikes: 12-hour account lock
• 4 strikes: 7-day account lock
• 5 or more strikes: Permanent suspension

Twitter says humans will begin to take these actions while it trains its automated moderators to work hand-in-hand to make it more effective. The COVID-19 vaccination is gradually increasing across the globe with Ghana receiving the first batch of COVAX vaccines and it is very important to step up public education. 

SOURCE: Twitter Blog