Twitter ditches its COVID-19 misinformation rules, what’s next?

(Pocket-lint) – Twitter has quietly stopped applying its own COVID-19 misinformation policy, potentially opening the door to harmful tweets about the pandemic. Twitter hasn’t officially announced the change in stance, but an updated policy document on its website confirmed that “effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy”. That comment appears below another line of text that suggests Twitter is aware of the potentially destructive nature of misinformation. “As the global community faces the COVID-19 pandemic together, Twitter is helping people find reliable information, connect with others, and follow what’s happening in real time”, the test reads.

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Twitter and social networks like it have been a source of dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic since it began in late 2019.

Ranging from claims of how and where the pandemic began all the way through suggestions that vaccines are dangerous and horse medication could cure the virus, false information was rife. Policies like the one Twitter is no longer following were applied by multiple companies in an attempt to ensure such false information couldn’t spread so easily. The reversal of Twitter’s misinformation policy comes as the company continues to reinstate banned accounts at the behest of owner/CEO Elon Musk and his Twitter followers.

With no indication of which accounts have been reinstated, nor why they were banned in the first place, it’s possible COVID-19 misinformation could make a comeback across a social network still reeling from Musk’s failed Twitter Blue and paid-for verification launch. With Twitter Blue set to have another attempted launch in the future, what’s next for the beleaguered social network? Musk’s new feud with Twitter could see the app kicked off the App Store, all while he claims that signups are at an all-time high.

Writing by Oliver Haslam.