Twitter removes misinformation policies
Twitter’s rules under new CEO
Elon Musk published Monday do not include policies about misinformation.
Musk said the rules will “evolve over time” but as they stand Monday they appear to offer a more bare skeleton of safety policies than what existed before.
The new rules do prohibit action such as the glorification of violence, promotion of terrorism, child sexual exploitation and targeted harassment. They also seek to limit users from impersonating others, and from publishing other people’s private information.
But the “
Twitter Rules” do not include some of the policies the platform had in place before Musk took over the company as part of his $44 billion acquisition, including rules to mitigate misinformation about COVID-19 or crisis misinformation about areas in conflict, such as Ukraine.
The rules do state that users may not use Twitter’s services “for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in election of other civic processes.”
In a blog post from August, the company laid out additional rules in place ahead of the election including labeling “misleading information,” and directing users to information about voting with “prebunks.”
Those rules did not appear to be included in the rules published on Monday.
The Hill has reached out to a Twitter spokesperson for comment.
In response to a reporter on Twitter about whether the new rules mean Twitter is no longer enforcing its misinformation related policies, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth said “no.”
The rollout comes amid widespread concerns from civil rights and other advocacy groups about the risk of rising hate speech and misinformation on Twitter under Musk, based on the CEOs previous comments about wanting to create his vision of a “free speech” platform with less content moderation measures in place.
Even before officially changing Twitter policies, advocacy group leaders
slammed Musk’s decisions to lay off Twitter staff. They said those staffing changes would make it difficult for Twitter to moderate content at an acceptable level even if Musk didn’t change policies.
Twitter published rules for the platform on Monday under new CEO Elon Musk that added to confusion over what content will be allowed on a Twitter that is under his control. Musk said the rule…
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