
Twitter broadly bans any Covid-19 tweets that could help the virus spread - vonmoltke
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18/twitter-coronavirus-covid-19-misinformation-policy/
======
ibeckermayer
Incredible. Twitter has been functioning as the self correcting mechanism
throughout this crisis, as the experts have fumbled and tripped over their own
feet while responding to this crisis.

As of 3 days ago, weren’t the “experts” in the UK saying they were going to
let the virus rip through the population to reach herd immunity? Until some
dissenting experts noted that doing so would likely cause mass death and
chaos. Would Twitter have shut down the members of the public noticing that
the UK’s plan was insane, before the change of course?

You can sure as hell bet they wouldn’t shut down the UK government’s initial
tweets, despite the fact that they caused the virus to spread.

~~~
dilap
I remember back in the day when Twitter were free speech absolutists. And then
they made exceptions just for direct threats, and just for hate speech, and
just for nazis, and...

And how here we are straight-up banning speech that is contra "expert
guidance".

The slopes, they are slippery!

~~~
anewguy9000
how the hell is twitter going to know what counts as "expert guidance"?
coronavirus has existed for 2 months. there are many more unknowns than facts.
heres a fact: published science says closing borders to travllers is
ineffective. but its done anyway (so politicians can be seen as "doing
something" instead of nothing). now twitter can say they are "doing something"
to stop the virus too! LOL

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gnicholas
> _The new policy bans tweets denying expert guidance on the virus,
> encouraging “fake or ineffective treatments, preventions and diagnostic
> techniques” as well as tweets that mislead users by pretending to be from
> health authorities or experts._

What happens when two experts disagree with each other? This rule seems to
assume that experts are all in agreement on everything.

~~~
sb057
"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no
clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus
(2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China" \- WHO

[https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152](https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152)

~~~
systemvoltage
I am not an expert at epidemiology but I found WHO's leadership sorely
lacking, profoundly confused and generally weak in every way.

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RegnisGnaw
So if I were to tweet that people should wear masks as it helps (evidence by
Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, China) will I get banned as CDC says masks don't
work?

~~~
dawnerd
Not to nitpick but CDC doesn't say they don't help, they say not to wear them
if you're not sick or not caring for someone that is.

Then again CDC says a bandanna is also appropriate alternative...

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Here is the thing... if you think a mask will help you from touching your
face, or remind you to be cautious, wear it. It literally can not hurt.

~~~
alkonaut
> It literally can not hurt.

If it barely helps and hospitals everywhere are out of masks, then using one
for very little gain does hurt. I think that's where we are.

~~~
catalogia
I have the impression that _" it barely helps"_ is a gross exaggeration, if
not a white lie, motivated by _" hospitals everywhere are out of masks"_

~~~
DanBC
No.

It barely helps is a simple fact. Look at most of the masks being worn. The
have huge gaps all around them. They do no cover the eyes. And if you're not
used to wearing a mask you'll be adjusting it constantly -- touching your
face.

What untrained people are doing is tying a fomite to their face and expecting
it to magically protect them, ignoring the fact that most transmission is via
your hands.

------
SpicyLemonZest
I'm pretty worried about this. The measures in place today are entirely
warranted, and people will die if their effectiveness is undermined. But if
the government announces some unacceptable measure, say a year-long shutdown
for the sake of argument, tweets saying "yo wtf we're not doing that" fall
under both the letter and spirit of the policy. Can we trust Twitter to revoke
the policy in such a case - would they even be allowed to?

~~~
notafraudster
I'm not sure I follow the slippery slope. In the scenario where a tyrannical
government six months from now is forcing Twitter to censor tweets... wouldn't
the same tyrannical government six months from now force Twitter to censor
tweets even if they weren't removing conspiracy tweets today?

Normally with a slippery slope argument there is some reason why the person
who wants the final step to be taken has to take the earlier steps first, but
here it just seems like the proposed bad guy can do what they want when they
want to.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I don't think the government's going to force them to censor tweets as part of
a tyrannical plan to suppress dissent. Twitter's just wedged themselves in a
spot where they may _have_ to censor tweets until the pandemic is over, since
any attempt to walk back the policy will be seen - not inaccurately! - as a
decision to allow fake COVID-19 news. Maybe inconsistent enforcement of the
policy will be a good enough safety valve, but I'd prefer if people judging
which tweets they believe were the safety valve.

------
Grue3
Seems to me like the virus will spread with or without any tweets. Twitter
would like to think it has enough influence to affect it in any way, but
that's simply not the case. Only 10% of Americans read Twitter at all, and the
percentage who would read a specific tweet is staggeringly low.

~~~
notafraudster
One thing we've all learned about epidemiology over the last few weeks is that
like many network processes, it's not about the raw number of infected, it's
about their centrality to other networks of connections. Hence you get super-
spreaders, like how over 80% of the cases in South Korea are directly traced
to one person going to church.

If we imagine that news and reporting works the same way, then what matters is
not that only 10% of Americans read Twitter, but which 10%. If, say, all
journalists and reporters and members of congress read Twitter, then that
would be a conduit for misinformation posted on Twitter to spread more
broadly, right?

(I do agree that in the past Twitter's role in civic life has been overblown,
e.g. westerners projecting Twitter as being operative in the Arab Spring when
in fact most domestic organization in the Arab Spring was done over local mesh
network apps and Twitter was mostly used to report the events to the English-
language world, not initiate change internally)

~~~
makomk
Careful. Remember, it only counts as a case if it's detected, and South Korea-
style contact tracing is a lot less capable of detecting small clusters that
have split off from each other due to the people tying them together no longer
testing positive than they are large clusters involving the same people going
to the same church or office with attendance-tracking on a regular basis.

------
hangphyr
I think Twitter's motivation isn't to reduce the impact of the virus, or that
their management trusts governments this much. They're anticipating
politicians looking for scapegoats, they're ensuring they can't take the blame
from governments following any negative outcomes.

From Twitter's standpoint, if as a business their primary goal is to continue
to at bare minimum exist, this is actually their most conservative and lowest
risk option. We could debate all day on what sources of information have been
the best, government or non-government, but I don't think Twitter is
interested at all in considering that side of it.

------
ezoe
Any censorship cause a rather strange expression to overcome it. Example:
YouTube automatically disable the monetization on video which utter the words
coronavirus. The intent is to prevent malicious videos profiting from
spreading the bogus information like drinking a certain herb tea makes you
immune to the virus.

The YouTube's intent is understandable, but it ban without considering the
context, just blind matching to the word, even if the context is harmless.

The result, the youtubers start referring the coronavirus in an expression
"the virus we can't say its name here" and alike.

It reminds me of the Harry Potter's You-Know-Who.

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pjc50
It's unfortunate that the success of twitter relies on .. going viral.

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lmilcin
The thing I am worried about is excessive power to shape public discourse.

I am certain the power to decide what is and what is not acceptable should not
be vested in private companies.

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ProAm
twitter is so bad at policing anything, just be a platform, and stop shaping
the conversation

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jhamilton
cool now do that to the white supremacist side of twitter

~~~
thosakwe
It pains me to think that this will probably never happen.

~~~
jsjddbbwj
Must be really painful to know your political opponents are not being
oppressed. White supremacists probably even feel the same way about you!

~~~
thosakwe
White supremacy is more than mere "political opposition." Don't trivialize
that.

------
samlevine
The virus doesn't care about our posts. It does not read them, does not try to
influence them. It is mindless and it may not even be alive, depending on the
definition of life.

The tools you use to counter a disinformation campaign are not the tools you
use to stop a virus. And with authorities actually getting stuff wrong
stopping heterodox views is a suicide pact.

China is doing this because they're worried about the stability of their
political system. Ours will survive goldbug1989 posting about how much they
hate the quarantine or karenlovesyoga writing that essential oils will protect
us.

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bjourne
That's really awful. Twitter has become very heavy-handed lately. Even
accounts that just tweets about American politics have been suspended. For
example, there's some videos of a certain politician touching women and
children inappropriately and those who have tweeted or retweeted some of those
videos have either been banned or have had their access restricted.

Yes, I know Twitter is a privately-owned site and they can do whatever they
want with their site. But it also means that it should no longer be seen as a
neutral platform.

I really wish some hackers got together and created a censorship resistant
social media platform. It is sorely needed.

~~~
standardUser
"But it also means that it should no longer be seen as a neutral platform."

Bizarre to me that anyone would ever have thought that in the first place.
Twitter has always been a for-profit enterprise, which completely precludes
neutrality.

"I really wish some hackers got together and created a censorship resistant
social media platform. It is sorely needed."

And then what happens when that platform is used to plan and execute violent
attacks and share illegal pornography? I don't disagree that this is a good
idea, but it's also not a silver bullet. Free and open communication will
always be a perpetual struggle requiring trade-offs and compromises.

~~~
bjourne
If that is bizarre to you then you are simply out of touch. A majority of
Twitter users treat the site as neutral carrier of tweets. Nothing happens to
a censorship resistant platform that is used to execute violent attacks or
share illegal pornography. And that is the beauty of it. Your question is like
asking what happens to the room in which I and my co-conspirators plan a coup.

