Because the options are so specific, it can often be unclear which one to use. If I had a penny for how many times people message me asking why there's no option to report misinformation on Twitter, I'd be a very rich woman. Since the start of the pandemic, pressure has mounted on social media sites to do more to combat a wave of harmful falsehoods that have spread online.
That includes unfounded conspiracies about Covid and vaccines, as well as surrounding last year's US election, which went on to inspire the riots at Capitol Hill and saw US President Donald Trump's account suspended. I've spent the past year-and-a-half covering the real-world impact of misleading posts online - scaring people off Covid jabs, destroying relationships, and provoking violence. Some critics argue that the option to report misinformation should have been introduced months ago to help prevent this offline harm.
But the question remains - what impact will this really have? There are fears that the social media site will struggle to moderate the avalanche of content reported - including from those promoting falsehoods, who then flag accurate information as misleading.
Twitter has focused on issuing suspensions and bans to accounts which consistently spread harmful Covid misinformation when they come to the company's attention. It also began putting warning labels on such tweets in early , announced a collaboration with news organisations as part of an attempt to debunk false information, and started a pilot scheme in January to allow a small number of people to submit "notes" about misleading content.
However, Twitter and other tech giants continue to be criticised for the spread of false information. Other tweets with misleading coronavirus information are slipping through the cracks. Actress Fran Drescher, who has more than , followers, tweeted on May "I can't believe all the commercials for 5G. Dial it bac. Both tweets didn't have a label. CNET isn't linking to these tweets because they contain false information.
Other social networks say they've had success with labeling false content. Still, a study by MIT found that labeling false news could result in users believing stories that hadn't gotten labels even if they contained misinformation. The MIT researchers call this phenomenon the "implied truth effect. David Rand, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management , who co-authored the study, said one potential solution is for companies to ask social media users to rate content as trustworthy or untrustworthy.
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More harm than good? Twitter struggles to label misleading COVID tweets News articles and tweets denouncing the 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory are being mislabeled.
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