War in Ukraine: Twitter adds warnings to deceptive messages

To read tweets that are considered problematic, you must first click on a message announcing that the spread of false or misleading information could have dangerous consequences in people’s real lives, explains official in charge of integrity issues on the platform, Yoel Roth.

Warnings will be added to tweets that are more visible or from accounts such as media associated with governments or government entities.

Furthermore, this will not be possible likeretweet or share problematic posts.

Once Twitter determines that a message is wrong, the platform will also ensure that it does not automatically speed up its spread.

The goal is to promote reliable and powerful information and to be sure not exaggerated or recommended viral misinformation through Twitter’s algorithms, Roth said.

This new policy will guide the group’s efforts in the event of armed conflict, emergency health situations or major natural disasters, starting with the war in Ukraine.

To determine whether the claims are misleading, we need to verify certain credible and publicly available sources, including evidence from conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organizations, people conducting investigations from public internet resources, journalists, etc.detailed mr. Roth.

Twitter plans to target, for example, tweets that misrepresent the situation on the basis of a conflict or report false allegations about the use of force, war crimes or humanitarian response.

The California group has already taken steps to try to reduce the circulation of Russia’s official propaganda on social networks, for example by blocking the accounts of Russian media RT and Sputnik in the European Union, or by not recommends including Russian government accounts.

This new policy was announced at a time when the social network was about to be bought by Elon Musk, who said he wanted to strengthen freedom of expression on the platform by limiting content moderation.