Elon Musk has abandoned Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy after vowing to make the site a free speech champion. The Telegraph has the story.
“Effective November 23rd 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a notice on its website reads.
A page on Twitter’s website titled “COVID-19 misleading information policy” now redirects users to Twitter’s user help homepage.
That page previously said: “Content that is demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm (such as increased exposure to the virus, or adverse effects on public health systems) may not be shared on Twitter.”
Other, more generalised policies on posting deliberately false or misleading information on Twitter are still listed on the company’s website and appear to be being enforced.
Meanwhile, the maker of the Fortnite series of games has come to the defence of Elon Musk after the Twitter owner accused Apple of threatening to pull the social network from its App Store.
Mr. Musk attacked the iPhone maker with a flurry of tweets on Monday, saying the company had cut its Twitter advertising and threatened to bump the social network from Apple’s App Store.
The SpaceX chief executive asked whether Apple hated free speech, criticised its app fees and even pondered whether the tech giant might go after another of his companies, Tesla.
Mr Musk, 51, also posted a meme suggesting he planned to “go to war” rather than pay the 30% fee.
Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of Epic Games, which makes the hugely successful Fortnite series, gave his support, calling Apple “a menace to freedom worldwide”.
In 2019, Epic sued Apple for anticompetitive behaviour with its App Store, but a judge ruled largely in favour of the world’s most valuable company last year.
Both Epic and Apple are appealing the case after the judge also said Apple should allow developers to link customers to their own payment systems.
Mr. Sweeney said: “Epic attempted to open discussions for five years, from 2015 to 2020. Apple would never talk. This is chronicled in the public record of the Epic v Apple antitrust trial. Apple is a menace to freedom worldwide. They maintain an illegal monopoly on app distribution, they use it to control American discourse, and they’re endangering protesters in China by storing sensitive customer data in a state-owned data center.”
Worth reading in full.
Comment: RT reports on Musk’s revamping of Twitter’s policy on Covid posts and banned users:
Twitter has said it will no longer enforce its coronavirus misinformation policy, according to an update on the platform’s Covid-19 transparency page that went largely unnoticed since it was posted last week. The move came as its new owner Elon Musk announced a “general amnesty” for previously suspended accounts.
The misinformation policy was initially developed in 2020 amid the outbreak of Covid-19 and was meant to combat “harmful” misleading posts about the coronavirus, government policies aimed at curbing its spread, and related vaccines.
Users who violated the rule received strikes. After two or three strikes, their accounts were suspended for 12 hours. After four, they would be locked out for a week, while offenders with more than five strikes were permanently banned from the platform.
According to statistics published by Twitter itself, between January 2020 and September 2022, the platform’s moderators challenged over 11.72 million accounts and suspended more than 11,000 for violating the rule. They also scrubbed nearly 100,000 pieces of content worldwide under the policy.
The extensive moderation policy became a topic of heated debate. Some called for more censorship of posts deemed to be harmful, while others argued this constituted suppression of free speech.
Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion last month, he has made a number of dramatic changes at the company, including laying off nearly two-thirds of its staff and significantly cutting the site’s moderation and management teams.
Ahead of Thanksgiving, the billionaire also vowed to extend a “general amnesty” to an unspecified number of suspended accounts after holding a Twitter poll, in which more than 72.4% out of 3.1 million respondents supported the move.
Critics have argued that the social networking service could soon become a hotbed for misinformation, right-wing extremism and hate speech. Musk, however, has insisted that he wants Twitter to become a level playing field and a bastion of free speech where people can peacefully exchange their views on a wide range of topics.
Fortnite is not alone in its complaints about Apple’s app policies:
