Elon Musk’s pro-free speech agenda has caused Twitter to abandon its policy of suppressing misinformation concerning COVID-19.
Elon Musk’s Twitter Drops Its Covid Misinformation Policy Which Censored Tweets Questioning Vaccines
In 2020, Twitter created restrictions on ‘harmful misinformation’ about COVID and vaccines in order to censor and label tweets that the company believed had a significant negative impact on public health.
While that may have been the case, others criticised this on the basis that genuine stories of adverse reactions were not being aired. After all, this was in some part critical in allowing people to make an informed choice.
But as part of that process, Twitter shut down more than 11,200 accounts between 2020-22 for violating their terms of service. With that being said, the changes have now been implemented.
An extract from the company’s website confirmed as much: “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misinformation policy.” In reality, this should not come as a surprise for the following reasons.
First of all, Musk has made it very clear that he does want to see increasing freedom of speech and put an end to censorship now that he has acquired the platform. Secondly, he has also shown himself to be a supporter of those that were in opposition to the Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
This was most notably seen during the ‘the Freedom convoy protests’ in Canada where Musk tweeted ‘Canadian truckers’ rule. The response on social media was generally positive.
A certain subset of people felt that this would allow those who favoured and were against vaccinations to be able to put their points across, allowing each person to become more informed.
One person wrote: “@elonmusk is allowing both sides of the debate regarding covid and the vaccine. Not misinformation. Users of Twitter are old and ugly enough to research truth or lies.”
Time will tell how this new policy ends up fairing moving forward. So there you have it folks. What did you think about this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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