Twitter Adds ‘Events’ Page to Provide Fact-Checked COVID Content

Twitter is responding to challenges presented by the current environment in order to tackle COVID-19 misinformation.

Social media platform Twitter has introduced a curated India-only events page as an experiment, which includes fact-checked content around COVID-19 from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) verified fact-checkers, including The Quint.

Twitter says that they “are responding decisively to the challenges presented by the current environment” in order to tackle misinformation related to COVID-19.

This events page, which will show up at the top of the home timeline of every Twitter user in India, will increase access to authoritative sources of information amid the COVID crisis, where the legitimate information is constantly evolving and the mis/disinformation blooming.

The events page will feature content in seven Indic languages, apart from Hindi and English, and will be a curation of content published and uploaded to Twitter by the organisations in the fact-checkers network mentioned earlier.

Speaking about the step taken, Mahima Kaul, Director Public Policy, India and South Asia, Twitter says, “This experiment is a further step towards ensuring that when people come to the service for information about COVID-19, they are met with credible, authoritative content in one place. This is an evolving global conversation and we will continue to play our part in collaboration with experts and trusted authorities.”

Earlier in March, Twitter had broadened their policy guidance, widening their definition of harm to address and review content that went directly against guidance from authoritative sources of public health information. The platform had said that they would remove content which carried “a clear call to action that could directly pose a risk to people’s health or well-being,” but said they would be unable to take action in cases of “incomplete or disputed information about COVID-19”.

On Monday, 11 May, the platform also began introducing labels and warning messages providing additional context and information on some tweets containing potentially harmful or misleading information related to COVID-19. These labels will link to a “Twitter-curated page or external trusted source containing additional information on the claims made within the Tweet”.

This followed close on the heels of another process of labelling tweets containing "manipulated media" with an aim to mislead people.