What you need to know
- Twitter is now fact-checking tweets linking 5G and coronavirus.
- Suspect tweets are now labeled with a 'Get the facts about COVID-19'.
- The link takes users to news and official sources debunking the myth.
Twitter has started labeling tweets that link 5G and COVID-19 with fact-check links to news and official sources debunking the myth.
As reported by Business Insider:
Twitter has started displaying fact-check labels on tweets that appear to incorrectly link 5G mobile technology to the spread of the coronavirus.The label appears beneath such tweets, and reads: "Get the facts on COVID-19". Clicking the label links through to a thread titled: "No, 5G isn't causing coronavirus." The thread links to news articles, tweets, and official sources that debunk the conspiracy theory.
Back in May, Twitter announced that it was updating its approach to misleading information stating:
Earlier this year, we introduced a new label for Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media. Similar labels will now appear on Tweets containing potentially harmful, misleading information related to COVID-19. This will also apply to Tweets sent before today.
Labeled tweets get a 'Get the facts about COVID-19' label which links users to articles and news from official sources. The idea that 5G and coronavirus are linked is, of course, nonsense. Yet in the UK, 90 masts (most of them not 5G) have been targeted by arson attacks, and engineers (most of whom weren't working on 5G) have been the target of verbal abuse in the streets.
Twitter has made plenty of headlines over the course of the last 2 weeks after labeling tweets from President Donald Trump. It fact-checked one tweet on the grounds it contained misleading information about voting by post, and also removed another tweet for 'glorifying violence'.
