Add Category
Twitter has rolled back a policy designed to tackle COVID-19 misinformation on the platform, and its former head of trust and safety has warned the company no longer has enough staff for safety work.
- Elon Musk took over Twitter on October 27 and moved quickly to initiate a number of changes to the platform and staffing
- Twitter's former safety lead Yoel Roth says the social media company is not safer under its new owner
- Mr Musk has accused Apple of pressuring Twitter over content moderation
The reduction of misinformation measures lends the social media site to the risk of a potential surge in false claims while COVID-19 cases rise in China and some parts of the world.
The move also comes amid concerns about Twitter's ability to fight misinformation after it let go about half of its staff, including those involved in content moderation, under new boss Elon Musk.
"Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy," an update on its blog page said.
It was not immediately clear which specific measures Twitter would drop, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the company implemented a number of measures that included putting warnings on tweets with disputed information about the health crisis, and a framework to have users remove tweets that advanced harmfully false claims related to vaccines.
Mr Musk took over Twitter on October 27 and moved quickly to initiate a number of changes to the platform and staff.
He said he planned to set up a content moderation council with "widely diverse viewpoints".
Yoel Roth, who was the platform's head of safety, had tweeted after Mr Musk's takeover that by some measures, Twitter safety had improved under the billionaire's ownership.
But asked in an interview on Tuesday whether he still felt that way, Mr Roth said: "No."
Mr Roth was a Twitter veteran who helped steer the social media platform through several watershed decisions, including the move to permanently suspend its most famous user, former US president Donald Trump, last year.
Mr Roth's departure further rattled advertisers, many of whom backed away from Twitter after the mass lay-offs.
Before Musk assumed the helm at Twitter, about 2,200 people globally were focused on content-moderation work, according to Mr Roth.
He said he did not know the number after the acquisition because the corporate directory had been turned off.
Under Mr Musk, Twitter has begun to stray from its adherence to written and publicly available policies and move toward content decisions made unilaterally by its new owner — something Mr Roth cited as a reason for his resignation.
"One of my limits was if Twitter starts being ruled by dictatorial edict rather than by policy … there's no longer a need for me in my role, doing what I do," Mr Roth said.
He said the revamp of the Twitter Blue premium subscription, which would allow users to pay for a verified check mark on their account, launched despite warnings and advice from the trust and safety team.
The launch was quickly beset by spammers impersonating major public companies such as Eli Lilly, Nestle and Lockheed Martin.
Mr Roth also said on Tuesday that Twitter erred in restricting the dissemination of a New York Post article that made claims about then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son shortly before the 2020 presidential election.
But he defended Twitter's decision to permanently suspend Mr Trump for risk of further incitement of violence after the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
"We saw the clearest possible example of what it looked like for things to move from online to off," Mr Roth said.
"We saw people dead in the Capitol."
Mr Musk tweeted on November 19 that Mr Trump's account would be reinstated after a slim majority voted in favour of the move in a surprise Twitter poll.
Changes to the social media site appear to have also caused concern at tech giant Apple, with Mr Musk accusing the iPhone maker of threatening to block Twitter from its app store.
Mr Musk said Apple was pressuring Twitter over content moderation demands.
The action, unconfirmed by Apple, would not be unusual because the company has routinely enforced its rules and previously removed apps such as Gab and Parler.
Reuters