A while ago, Twitter initiated multiple flagged tweets about covid-19 as misleading and suspended the accounts of medical professionals and scientists who post factual information about the hazards of covid-19.
During the pandemic, a trend of circulating misinformation regarding coronavirus peaked. To stop this, Twitter began to suspend accounts and flag several tweets. But this time, it caused extreme inconvenience to doctors and scientists because their tweets were not misleading; instead, they tried to communicate useful information to inform their communities about the ongoing risk of coronavirus.
Twitter said in an interview with The Washington Post that they had been aware of their mistake and began restoring the suspended accounts. In addition, Twitter’s representative, Celeste Carswell clarified that they had acknowledged the fault and are working on revising the protocol to prevent such mistakes afterward. Twitter sent users apologizing messages for the inconvenience they have caused their users. In a similar stance, a user whose background related to the medical field said her tweets were flagged in the previous week for disinformation. However, her post was related to science.
Moreover, many medical and health professionals complained about the suspension of accounts and flagged tweets. According to health experts, this mislabeling practice is awful. If their tweets continued to be flagged, it would hinder the process of awareness and make people question the credibility of health experts.
In particular, health experts say if they tweet about scientific studies, vaccine-related misconceptions, after effects of Covid, symptoms, and all such information related to coronavirus and their tweets get flagged, people will become confused and misguided. Usually, if authentic research is labeled as false, people begin to believe it is inaccurate and ignore factual information, even when the research is shown to be precise and true.
To emphasize, if Twitter does not make efforts to stop this mislabeling, people will hardly believe in Twitter’s misleading information protocol. We know that the platform has made efforts throughout the pandemic to halt the spread of misinformation. According to Oxford’s study, 60 percent of fake claims about coronavirus remained on the internet without warning. Many people try to stop others from being vaccinated, and they ignore platform policies.
Read next: Influencers Might Be More Trusted by Gen Z Than Reviews on Product Pages
During the pandemic, a trend of circulating misinformation regarding coronavirus peaked. To stop this, Twitter began to suspend accounts and flag several tweets. But this time, it caused extreme inconvenience to doctors and scientists because their tweets were not misleading; instead, they tried to communicate useful information to inform their communities about the ongoing risk of coronavirus.
Twitter said in an interview with The Washington Post that they had been aware of their mistake and began restoring the suspended accounts. In addition, Twitter’s representative, Celeste Carswell clarified that they had acknowledged the fault and are working on revising the protocol to prevent such mistakes afterward. Twitter sent users apologizing messages for the inconvenience they have caused their users. In a similar stance, a user whose background related to the medical field said her tweets were flagged in the previous week for disinformation. However, her post was related to science.
Moreover, many medical and health professionals complained about the suspension of accounts and flagged tweets. According to health experts, this mislabeling practice is awful. If their tweets continued to be flagged, it would hinder the process of awareness and make people question the credibility of health experts.
In particular, health experts say if they tweet about scientific studies, vaccine-related misconceptions, after effects of Covid, symptoms, and all such information related to coronavirus and their tweets get flagged, people will become confused and misguided. Usually, if authentic research is labeled as false, people begin to believe it is inaccurate and ignore factual information, even when the research is shown to be precise and true.
To emphasize, if Twitter does not make efforts to stop this mislabeling, people will hardly believe in Twitter’s misleading information protocol. We know that the platform has made efforts throughout the pandemic to halt the spread of misinformation. According to Oxford’s study, 60 percent of fake claims about coronavirus remained on the internet without warning. Many people try to stop others from being vaccinated, and they ignore platform policies.
Read next: Influencers Might Be More Trusted by Gen Z Than Reviews on Product Pages
