The Covid misinformation policy on Twitter is no longer being upheld.
The Covid misinformation policy on Twitter is no longer being upheld. Another indication of how Elon Musk intends to transform the social media company he purchased a month ago is Twitter’s announcement that it will no longer enforce its long-standing Covid misinformation policy.
Twitter created a comprehensive set of guidelines in 2020 that aimed to forbid “harmful misinformation” regarding the disease and its vaccines.
According to Twitter statistics, between January 2020 and September 2022, more than 11,000 accounts were suspended for violating the Covid misinformation guidelines, and close to 100,000 pieces of content were also taken down. The following medical professionals praised the policy: US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy used Twitter’s policies as an example of what businesses should do to combat misinformation in a recommendation to technology platforms.
Read more: New Twitter Ticks In Blue, Gold, And Grey Are Coming From Elon Musk.
The new rules didn’t seem to be formally announced by Twitter. However, some Twitter users noticed a note that had been added to the page on Twitter’s website that describes its Covid policy on Monday evening.
The notice stated that “Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy as of November 23, 2022.”
Musk stated that many previously banned Twitter accounts would be reinstated as soon as this week. Some of the 11,000 accounts that were banned under Twitter’s previous Covid misinformation guidelines may be among the accounts that are restored.
In the early stages of the pandemic, the CEOs of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX tested the boundaries of Twitter’s previous policy. Musk used the social network in the months of March and April 2020 to minimize the severity of the situation and voice his displeasure with how the pandemic had been handled. Although public health officials at the time insisted that social isolation remained necessary to prevent an outbreak of infections that could overwhelm hospitals, he repeatedly pushed for the repeal of the stay-at-home policies.
In April 2020, Musk deviated from the script during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to criticize Covid policies.
On the call, Musk said, “I would call it ‘forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all of their Constitutional rights and breaking people’s freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not why people came to America or built this country. “It’s outrageous,”
Musk claims to have consumed Covid twice. He has stated that he supports vaccination despite his skepticism of public health policies, even though he doesn’t think the shots should be required. However, he stated that he would not get vaccinated because “I’m not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids” in a September 2020 podcast interview with technology journalist Kara Swisher for the New York Times.
Musk responded bluntly when Swisher raised the possibility that many people might perish if they disregarded public health recommendations: “Everyone perishes.”
