Twitter, does not fail to take action when misleading and fake information comes to its notice. It constantly updates its policies to eliminate a large presence of misinformation or conspiracy theories, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the wake of COVID-19, conspiracy theories and misinformation surfaced the internet. One among them was the 5G network. It started even before the pandemic occurred and blew out of proportion when it was linked to COVID-19. It claimed that the 5G network had weakened the immunity of people, thereby causing them to contract the virus.
Twitter may have gone a little overboard by labeling tweets having words frequency, oxygen, and 5G with a misinformation tag even if they were factually correct. This may be due to the 5G conspiracy that surfaced Twitter.
“In the last few weeks, you may have seen tweets with labels linking to additional info about COVID-19. Not all of those tweets had potentially misleading content associating COVID-19 and 5G. We apologize for any confusion and we’re working to improve our labeling process,” the Twitter Security team tweeted.
“We may also use labels with links to additional context and information to help keep you informed about misleading or disputed topics,” it added
Liz Kelly, a Twitter spokeswoman said that this may have resulted due to a broken algorithm. The algorithms constantly vary according to what is happening on the platform.
This may have raised some eyebrows about the moderation of algorithms that resulted in misjudgment.