Twitter Rolls Out New ‘Crisis Information Policy’ to Warn Users of Certain Content

Elon Musk has notoriously questioned Twitter on its policies around content suppression, even polling his millions of followers as to whether or not they believe that the social media company “rigorously adheres” to the concept of free speech.

Twitter is now taking a new stand and rolling out a new policy against misinformation that the company is dubbing its “crisis misinformation policy”, applicable during deemed periods of “armed conflict, public health emergencies, and large-scale natural disasters.”

“In times of crisis, misleading information can undermine public trust and cause further harm to already vulnerable communities,” Twitter explained in a statement. “Alongside our existing work to make reliable information more accessible during crisis events, this new approach will help to slow the spread by us of the most visible, misleading content, particularly that which could lead to severe harms.”

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The policy is being rolled out amid the escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine, though the company only directly addressed this once.

“While this first iteration is focused on international armed conflict, starting with the war in Ukraine, we plan to update and expand the policy to include additional forms of crisis,” the company said.

In order to enact the policy, Twitter will cover certain Tweets with the new warning that users will have to click through in order to see the content. Tweets with the warning will also not be promoted or amplified through users’ feeds or on Twitter’s public page.

The company clarified that this content will not be fully removed in an effort to “mitigate harm” without deleting content outright.

Twitter was down just shy of 30% year over year at market close on Friday.

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