Twitter Disinfo Control in Action

This isn’t an article per se, so didn’t feel like something I could add to the spreadsheet, but: I noticed that “#NoMeat_NoCoronaVirus” is trending with over one million tweets. From a virology perspective that’s a pretty suspect claim , and searching the hashtag, it seems to be a primarily religious objection, without anything to state for its effacacy.

Anyway, I notice that Twitter has a “know the facts” header:

Personally, if they flagged it as “disinfo” enough to put this header on, then I almost feel like Twitter’s response is a little too anemic here - why not exclude it from my “Trends for You?” entirely? But at least it’s something. What do people think?

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Interesting observation! I agree with you that it seems odd to flag something with “Know the facts” suggesting its disinfo, but then to still include it in trends.

I’ve heard some disinfo experts describe having “trending” or “top 5” features as anti-patterns that encourage gaming.

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