Thread by @DisinfoEU

New research: Disinformation that wrongly links COVID-19 and 5G technology often remain undetected. @DisinfoEU researcher @NetoSessa examines moderation shortcomings on Twitter and YouTube. Thread ⬇️ (1/8)
disinfo.eu/publications/5…

As the pandemic unfolded, @Twitter and @YouTube vowed to remove content that breached their policy guidelines. They pledged to provide the community with reliable and real-time information, in particular regarding disinformation linking 5G technology to the coronavirus. (2/8)

However, we still notice significant time delays and discrepancies in their enforcement. This leads to false information remaining on these platforms for months before it gets labelled or removed (3/8)

Even though these policy updates began to be enforced in April 2020, we have continued to identify numerous tweets and videos which accuse 5G networks of either causing or amplifying the symptoms of COVID-19, in open violation of the social networks' policies. (4/8)

Content moderation is a delicate balancing act, frequently resulting in unintended errors. Insufficiently mature automated moderation algorithms can be counterproductive, as in the case of Twitter's fact-checking label for tweets mentioning 5G & Covid(5/8) businessinsider.com/twitter-5g-cor…

We find this disinformation has significant international and cross-platform reach. Although our primary focus is on English-speaking content, we observed 5G-coronavirus hoaxes from 20 countries on 4 continents, transmitted and amplified through a number of social networks. (6/8)

The fact that disinformation was able to be shared so widely before being effectively addressed leads us to ask: do we need due diligence obligations on the reach of such content, along with more specific verifiable data from platforms? #Friction #DigitalServicesAct (7/8)

This research follows our earlier work on loopholes in enforcement of Facebook policies. It is part of our Covid19 hub, providing research and analysis from the community working on disinformation. (8/8)
disinfo.eu/publications/h…