Spotlight credible Covid-19 information from authoritative and reliable sources
Today Twitter launched an Event page feature to surface real-time credible and official information about Covid-19 from authoritative government agencies, public officials, civil society and media. Located at the top of the home timeline on mobiles and the #Explore tab on desktop, the Covid-19 Event page is now available in Thailand; as well as in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the UAE, the UK and the US.
Covid-19 Event page: https://twitter.com/i/events/1240300661364772864?spoof_country=TH&lang=en
With a critical mass of expert organizations, official government accounts, health professionals, and epidemiologists on Twitter, our goal is to elevate and amplify authoritative health information as far as possible.
Protecting the Conversation
The power of a uniquely open service during a public health emergency is clear. The speed and borderless nature of Twitter presents an extraordinary opportunity to get the word out and ensure people have access to the latest information from expert sources around the world.
To support that mission, Twitter’s global Trust & Safety team is continuing its zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation and any other attempts to abuse our service at this critical juncture. We have recently expanded our safety rules to include content that could place people at a higher risk of transmitting Covid-19. We now require people to remove Tweets that include content which increases the chance that someone contracts or transmits the virus, including:
Denial of expert guidance.
Encouragement to use fake or ineffective treatments, preventions, and diagnostic techniques.
Misleading content purporting to be from experts or authorities.
At present, we’re not seeing significant coordinated platform manipulation efforts. However, we will remain vigilant and have invested substantially in our proactive abilities to ensure trends, search, and other common areas of the service are protected from malicious behaviors. As ever, we also welcome constructive and open information sharing from governments and academics to further our work in these areas — we’re in this together.
Embeddable Tweet: https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1240418440982040579
Global Expansion of the Covid-19 Search Prompt
Launched six days before the official designation of the virus in January, Twitter’s dedicated search prompt ensures that when you search for Covid-19 information, you see credible, authoritative content at the top of your search. Twitter is consistently monitoring the conversation to make sure keywords — including common misspellings — also generate the search prompt.
In Thailand, Twitter has partnered with the Ministry of Public Health (@pr_moph) and WHO Thailand (@WHOThailand) – the prompt points people to both Twitter accounts, as well as providing the hotline number for the Department of Disease Control – tel: 1422.
Twitter has official local partnerships and the Covid-19 Search Prompt is available in 66 areas and 27 languages, and is in partnership with over 60 government agencies around the world. Twitter will continue to expand the Search Prompt as the need arises.
Additional Protections and Partnerships
Based on Twitter’s Inappropriate Content Policy, any attempt by advertisers to opportunistically use the Covid-19 outbreak to target inappropriate ads will be halted. Government entities that want to disseminate public health information will be permitted to promote ads on Covid-19. In the case of Covid-19, we have put additional safeguards in place in order to facilitate the sharing of trusted public health information and to reduce potential harm to users. We are currently prohibiting the promotion of all medical masks due to strong correlation to Covid-19 and instances of inflated prices globally.
As a uniquely open service, Twitter data is being used in research every day and the researchers hub is publicly available. We welcome applications for the use of Twitter data to support research on Covid-19. We will also explore further #DataForGood partnerships to assess how our data products can enhance academic and NGO understanding of public health emergencies now and into the future.
What can you do?
Looking for advice on how best to use Twitter in a time like this? Follow WHO Thailand (@WHOThailand) and the Ministry of Public Health (@pr_moph) — seek out authoritative health information and ignore the noise. If you see something suspicious or abusive, report it to us immediately. Most importantly, think before you Tweet. Through Twitter Moments, we have curated longer-form content that helps tell the full story of what’s happening around Covid-19 globally. For educators and parents, consult our media literacy guide, which was built in partnership with UNESCO (@UNESCO), here.
Twitter is committed to playing its part and will continue to provide substantive updates as this situation evolves. For more, follow Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) and Twitter Public Policy (@Policy).
