Twitter is no longer enforcing the Covid-19 misleading information policy

https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/covid19.html

by sfusato • 4 years ago

102 87 4 years ago

transparency.twitter.com

Khaine2• 4 years ago

Is this the policy that originally said that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth, and then saying wearing a mask provides no additional benefit was a mistruth.

Is this also the policy that said saying COVID vaccines increased the risk of mydiocarditis in young people was a mistruth, and yet its now known to be true?

Because if so, good riddance to a piece of junk. All it did was fuel conspiracy and discredit government advice. Shame on anyone who thought that silencing decent was the best way to handle it.

eesmith5• 4 years ago

Is this the policy that originally said that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth, and then saying wearing a mask provides no additional benefit was a mistruth.

It doesn't seem so. From https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19 , one of the examples of a tweet to remove is: “now that it’s summertime, you don’t need a mask anymore, so don’t wear your mask!”

I don't see a time where Twitter's policy said otherwise.

Is this also the policy that said saying COVID vaccines increased the risk of mydiocarditis in young people was a mistruth, and yet its now known to be true?

As I understand the policy, not per se. There were three factors:

1. it must be an assertion of fact (not an opinion), expressed definitively, and intended to influence others’ behavior.

2. Is the claim demonstrably false or misleading?

3. Would belief in this information, as presented, lead to harm?

Someone writing that there's a very rare (as in 0.0022% chance) of mydiocarditis in young people, then that appears to be within policy. If someone says young people shouldn't get the vaccine because of the increased chance of mydiocarditis, then that that likely falls under #1.

My "0.0022% chance" comes from Myocarditis or Pericarditis Following the COVID-19 Vaccination in Adolescents: A Systematic Review, M Li, X Wang, J Feng, Z Feng, W Li, B Ya - Vaccines, 2022

] Conclusions: Our study showed that myocarditis/pericarditis occurred after vaccination with the BNT162b2 or Comirnaty vaccine, especially after the second vaccination in male adolescents, but the incidence of myocarditis/pericarditis after vaccination with the above vaccines was very rare (0.0022%). Therefore, it is recommended that adolescents should be vaccinated with the COVID-19 universal vaccine as soon as possible and closely monitored for subsequent adverse reactions, which can be treated promptly.

also, quoting Evaluating the relationship between myocarditis and mRNA vaccination, Charlotte Switzer & Mark Loeb (2022) - Expert Review of Vaccines, 21:1, 83-89,

] Myocarditis may be associated with vaccination, through several biological mechanisms. Studies have shown that live viral vaccinations can act as a trigger for hypersensitivity inflammatory reactions, but further work is required to examine how the mRNA formulation may induce these autoimmune responses. Given that the risk of these adverse events is low, and the benefit of protection against disease is so great, the receipt of mRNA vaccines is recommended. ...

] Consistently, all patients hospitalized with mRNA-associated myocarditis have been discharged in stable condition and responded well to clinical management, resolving the episode [15–27].

All it did was fuel conspiracy and discredit government advice.

Some of the other things covered on the policy were:

“5G causes coronavirus — go destroy the cell towers in your neighborhood!".

"Tweets offering the sale or facilitation of non-prescription treatments/cures for COVID-19, or those which advertise cures or treatments for COVID-19 that require a prescription or physician consultation."

"Specific and unverified claims made by people impersonating a government or health official or organization such as a parody account of official public health advisors claiming that hydroxychloroquine will prevent COVID-19."

"Claims that specific groups or nationalities are never susceptible to COVID-19, such as “people with dark skin are immune to COVID-19 due to melanin production” or are more susceptible, such as “avoid businesses owned by Chinese people as they are more likely to have COVID-19.”"

“Coronavirus is vulnerable to UV radiation - walking outside in bright sunlight will prevent COVID-19.”

“drinking bleach and ingesting colloidal silver will cure COVID-19.”

“COVID-19 does not infect children because we haven’t seen any cases of children being sick.”

“If you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, you don’t have coronavirus.”

tinalumfoil2• 4 years ago

Just because certain false statements were banned under the policy doesn’t mean true statements were not also banned. Twitter’s own examples are (obviously) self serving.

lzooz• 4 years ago

Good, now do away with other forms of censorship.

Eisenstein6• 4 years ago

You mean spam blocking? That is literally censorship.

datadata4• 4 years ago

Censorship = you can't say X at all

Spam Blocking = you can't say X more than Y (>> 1) times

While technically censorship, there is a big difference, I think. Obviously in practice spam blocking could maliciously or accidentally be used for censorship.

saint_fiasco• 4 years ago

I don't consent to receiving spam, so I don't mind if it's censored. I also self-censor my timeline aggressively by silencing, unfollowing and blocking accounts I don't like.

I only dislike censorship when they don't ask me first.

realgeniushere3• 4 years ago

In the government context, this problem is very aptly dealt with by distinguishing “content neutrality” from “viewpoint neutrality”. That’s why the government can punish spam emailers without violating the first amendment.

rdtwo2• 4 years ago

It’s probably better to give up on covid “misinformation”. All sorts of official groups like the WHO and CDC themselves have been spreading it so it’s almost impossible to come to a consensus on what is and isn’t true.

Some example statements that are controversial would include:

- Covid is not airborne - cloth masks are ineffective - covid originated in a lab in wuhan - omicron is mild

How do you deal with statements like that without pissing off a government group? It’s better to ignore it and some associated conspiracy stuff.

JumpCrisscross• 4 years ago

Covid is not airborne

Which public health authority objects to this statement?

leereeves3• 4 years ago

The WHO has a mixed record here. At first they said:

FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.

https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898

Now they say it is:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7

jimmydorry2• 4 years ago

The CDC disagreed up until May of last year.

The WHO disagreed until December 2021.

There is a significant overlap between all these parties of when airborne transmission was misinformation.

selfhoster11• 4 years ago

Science had a better idea of what the virus does after a while, and so the guidance was changed. That doesn't make the initial guidance a lie.

I won't defend the WHO (because they clearly did spread some misinformation at times), but the scientific community at large only changed its messaging because their information got better, not because they got "found out" as liars.

s1artibartfast3• 4 years ago

I strongly disagree. Most of these guidance were not set on scientific grounds to begin with, but based on political grounds. The science was always in the other direction for an unbiased reviewer.

It is good that science ultimately won out, but I think it will be a long time before institutional credibility is restored.

yucky• 4 years ago

One glaring example would be where CDC Director Rochelle Wolensky said: "Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick, and that it's not just in the clinical trials, but it's also in real-world data."[1]. That was never true. The science didn't change, this was a false statement when it was made. And it was amplified by everybody from the President of the United States[2] on down to people posting here.

These sorts of lies by people claiming to "trust the science" were then used to silence & censor people who challenged statements like this, and who challenged the idea that there was no potential long term harm despite all of the evidence showing young males in particular were more likely to develop myocarditis from the vaccine than from Covid.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-director-data-vaccinated...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/fact-check-biden-cnn...

gray_charger• 4 years ago

"The science" (I really hate that phrasing) doesn't change. Conclusive results require reproducibility. If "the science" changes then the initial findings were not reproducible and thus non conclusive and not "the science". Reproducibility points to a particular conclusion so following the trend shouldnt result in a complete 180 turnaround in provided information (the vaccines prevent the spread -> the vaccines don't prevent the spread). If they didn't have conclusive evidence of their statement they should just say " I don't know, but we are working to find that out". Premature assertions of correctness by the CDC, WHO, and other public health officials based on (now known) incorrect conclusions has done untold damage to their credibility making the public hesitant to trust them regarding any health guidance and in the worst case raising suspicion of malice from those most hurt by their guidance.

Georgelemental• 4 years ago

"Science" does not have any ideas about anything. Science is a tool that humans use to learn about the world; it is the human beings who have ideas about things. And, because human beings are fallible, it's generally advisable not to give a small group of them absolute unnacountable power over the speech of everyone else. "If men were angels" and all that

fdgsdfogijq• 4 years ago

they lied because they thought there would be a mask shortage, and medical workers needed all the masks they could get. So they told people they dont need masks.

phendrenad22• 4 years ago

That's a bold opinion, honestly. It seems to me that much of the initial guidance ("masks don't work") was an intentional lie to prevent mask shortages. Do you have evidence otherwise?

philwelch• 4 years ago

That’s all well and good for the scientific community, but the petty bureaucrats at Twitter, the White House, DHS, etc. who were policing “misinformation” on social media are another thing entirely.

ETH_start• 4 years ago

>Science had a better idea of what the virus does after a while, and so the guidance was changed. That doesn't make the initial guidance a lie.

No one has a monopoly on scientific thinking. The people whose tweets were "fact-checked" or removed, and who sometimes even had their accounts banned, could say exactly the same thing about those statements they made that ended up being proven wrong.

We shouldn't apply a hyper-critical lens to the statements of every one, except those deemed scientific experts by the established power structure.

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

There are at least three parts to this. One is the science. The science should have initially been saying "We don't know", and then "We think X, because Y, with Z level of certainty", with Z getting more and more certain as time went on.

Second is the public health aspects of this. They had to say "Do U, V, and W" before the science was clear that those were the correct things to do. (Why "had to"? Because if they said "We can't tell you what to do", first there would have been panic, and second they would have missed a chance to get ahead of it if they guessed right. So they went with their best guess, which is not an unreasonable thing to do.)

But the third thing is politics and reputation. They went with their best guess, but they didn't admit that it was a guess. They wanted everyone to do it, and so they talked like they were certain, even though they didn't have the data to be certain. When some of their guesses were wrong, they took a reputational hit, because they had sounded like they were certain. Then, compounding the problem, even after the evidence started to come in they stuck to their original advice to try to avoid taking the damage to their reputation, and just wound up making themselves look like buffoons. They damaged the reputation of public health for decades by how they handled this.

okprod• 4 years ago

One of the issues with this is not everyone is able to ignore conspiracy stuff, they take misinformation for information, and you get something like "masks don't work". Sort of like saying Fox News is harmless because we recognize it's news entertainment rather than news; there are many who believe it (or other sources) as news.

alexk307• 4 years ago

I think you need to understand that emerging novel viruses take time to understand. We still understand relatively little about covid, and to be upset with Twitter for doing it’s best at a time where emerging information is being blasted around the globe, is misplaced at best. Recommendations evolve as the virus itself does, and as organizations respond to emerging threats.

Imnimo• 4 years ago

If they only removed a few hundred to a few thousand Tweets per month, it seems like it must not have been a particularly stringent policy. Surely that's a very small portion of the number of misleading tweets about covid.

newaccount74• 4 years ago

Maybe they only policed content from popular twitterers? It probably makes sense to focus on the most influential and mainstream figures.

pornel• 4 years ago

Amnesty for previously banned harassers, unbanning of Trump, and now this all seem like a way to stir even more controversy and ideological keyboard-warrioring on Twitter. Short term it is going to drive "engagement" and produce a few charts with lines going up. Combined with decimation of anti-spam and anti-bot teams, Twitter is going to boast record numbers of posts.

stuckinhell• 4 years ago

I'm honestly still shocked Twitter didn't go down for good a couple weekends ago. There was so much hype it was going to crash and burn, I feel a bit foolish for believing it.

_djo_• 4 years ago

None of the actual engineers involved in Twitter said it would crash and burn immediately. Nor have other SREs. The belief in an imminent complete collapse was mostly amongst non specialists.

But SREs including former Twitter employees have said severe outages will become increasingly likely as the weeks go by, and that in the meantime we’d see an increasing number of unresolved glitches. So far that second part is proving quite true.

lesuorac• 4 years ago

Why keep the policy then? Like why "no longer enforce" the policy when you can just _remove_ the policy.

Like at least with drugs ("decriminalization") its because "no longer enforcing" the policy means people immediately won't be arrested/etc while repealing the law can take a long time. Presumably twitter has the authority to remove their own policies at will. (unless of course there's nobody still there that knows how to do that ...)

impulser_• 4 years ago

These policies did more harm then good. It just made more people distrust the government and create more aggression around the topic of COVID.

generj• 4 years ago

It’s been bizarre to see the increasing anti-vax sentiment on Hacker News the last few months.

MrMan• 4 years ago

just more super frightening symptoms of mass social media poisoning, I am sure its fine

anm892• 4 years ago

Good. They were censoring people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who were putting out valid scientific viewpoints (not anti vaxxer stuff) while putting out stuff like the nonsensical CDC early press release that you didn't need to wear a mask.

So, a win for the free flow of scientific information, even if some idiots get to say things that aren't true also.

LorenPechtel6• 4 years ago

He's part of the Great Barrington Declaration. That makes him a quack in my book.

anm892• 4 years ago

Every person on there is a credentialed health professional as is Dr Bhattacharya I'm happy to have access to their opinions and for them to have the right to communicate.

Sorry if you feel like your, (assumed) lay opinion, supersedes theirs. Even if you are a health professional, you have no monopoly on the right to express opinions.

Wanting to silence other professionals in your field is a quack / scammer viewpoint in and of itself.

jimrandomh• 4 years ago

Twitter censoring COVID-19-related information made the world worse, and it's good that they've stopped.

A lot of people seem to be taking a very naive perspective, thinking that censoring something means fewer people will believe it. In the case of COVID-19 misinformation in particular, I believe this is wrong.

At the start of the pandemic, all the major public health organizations told blatant lies about key facts: airborne transmission, surface transmission, whether it was present in US at all, the secondary attack rate, the effectiveness of masks, the infection-fatality rate, and whether it could have been a lab leak. This completely set fire to their credibility. Then they pivoted from attacking pro-maskers to attacking hydroxychloroquine advocates. These attacks consisted of highly ineffectual attempts at censorship: censored enough that everyone can see that censorship is being attempted, not censored enough to stop anyone from seeing it.

People are neither geniuses nor idiots. When the public health establishment turned on a dime from attacking masks to attacking hydroxychloroquine, many people inferred from that fact alone that hydroxychloroquine must be effective. It isn't, but the alternate world in which hydroxychloroquine was effective would have looked the same, so the reasoning was valid.

Given that history, and especially given how recent that history was, continuing to censor "COVID-19 misleading information" would be utterly insane.

benlivengood• 4 years ago

I can second the annoyance with the CDC throughout most of the pandemic. I had to read WHO publications and individual studies to get an inkling of what might be going on with covid risk where it mattered; to me and the people I care about (since I could personally do nothing about the rest of the public). I am not a virologist or public health expert, but I can see when a study has reasonable error bars and sample sizes for the inferences they are making from it. I'll also take an average educated guess of many virologists over a single small study, but there was nothing close to consensus on covid among experts for several months. During that time it was clear that isolation was the only provable way to combat covid and contact-tracing was virtually the only conceivable way to isolate without shutting down literally everything. So what did CDC do? No contact tracing, but 6-foot distancing, extreme hand washing, etc.

I disagree slightly with your statement about the reasoning that hydroxychloroquine being effective was correct. The correct conclusion to draw from an authority with no-better-than-chance at being correct changing their recommendation is exactly the same no-better-than-chance at being correct. It wasn't quite that bad; hand washing is a general good practice and had a chance at being helpful given no other information. The health agencies issued recommendations with no error bars and wrote themselves into a corner where they couldn't update to more reliable information without continually contradicting themselves, so as a result I still see signs left in stores asking people to 6-foot distance (even though masks are optional).

I also realize the underlying problem is that people are terrible at reasoning under uncertainty and also very unfamiliar with trying to do so, and so won't take announcements with error bars in a very useful way. Presented with uncertainty most people default to their status quo as if having less than perfect information is the same as no information. So the CDC's battle was to try to influence public behavior in ways that were ultimately beneficial, while probably knowing they had a limited number of tries before people noticed the uncertainty and reverted to status quo. A very unenviable position.

Twitter censoring misinformation may have delayed the build-up to useless uncertainty, or it may have come too late to help much. I don't have evidence either way. One part of the status quo is buying quack medicine, so there was never any hope for preventing some of the population from doing that regardless of messaging or censorship.

lern_too_spel• 4 years ago

Let's see how long this policy lasts if people spread COVID-19 misinformation that replaces Bill Gates as the Boogeyman with Elon Musk.

The guy is an intellectual lightweight making intellectual lightweight mistakes. Free speech isn't axiomatically important but only insofar as it increases your chances of survival, which is axiomatically important. That's a common mistake made by "muh freedoms" absolutists.

tibbydudeza• 4 years ago

The only people left at twitter seems to be H1B1 visa holders or diehard Musk fans - actually amazing to see how it plays out on a weekly basis and how Elon is making the most stupid decisions possible.

Money talks and advertisers don't want to have Parler/Social Truth unless they are into gold coins, MRE's or pillows.

jl27182• 4 years ago

Censorship is a strong indicator of an unpopular idea that is likely to be objectively true.

This is not political; it is Bayes’ theorem.

LorenPechtel6• 4 years ago

If there were no major disinformation campaigns this would generally be the case. However, these days it will lead you to believe in all disinformation campaigns.

jl27182• 4 years ago

Circular logic: this is exactly the problem at hand. But we can go further:

Disinformation campaigns are generally self-serving, so there is another conditional distribution on profit, or perhaps more measurably, resource expenditure.

So if you see somebody spending money to censor a belief that profits nobody, and promote a belief that profits themselves, it warrants heavy suspicion.

joeman1000• 4 years ago

Great news. I think many peoples lives were disrupted because of the dogmatism on this topic. We should always be ready to trash our viewpoints when presented with new facts. It’s also our responsibility to verify facts we’re presented. Most people using the internet are not children and should not be coddled in this regard.

egberts1• 4 years ago

Now, that Twitter ended 'Covid misinformation' policies, let's re-review the Federal™ own misinformation:

1. 15 days to slow the spread

2. Masks work

3. Lockdowns work

4. Natural immunity is a myth

5. mRNA shots are vaccines, not inoculants

6. Covid shots stop transmission

7. '100% safe & effective'

Twitter is no longer enforcing the Covid-19 misleading information policy

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