When Twitter suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene, it made sense and was the right thing to do at the right time. She will still be able to use her Congressional account.
Twitter said Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet that there had been a “extremely high number of Covid vaccine deaths” earned her a fifth “strike,” which meant she lost her account for good. Tweeted before: She said that vaccines were “failing,” when experts say they have saved millions of lives. She also said that Covid-19 wasn’t dangerous; in fact, it could be dangerous.
Twitter made the right decision by permanently suspending the account. If they did this more widely, it would be an amazingly simple and effective way to help stop the spread of dangerous misinformation. Now, it’s time for other social networks to do the same thing.
At a new record high, there were a lot of cases of Covid in the United States. With everyone from medical professionals to firefighters, train operators, and airline workers getting sick at the same time, some places may not be able to keep important services running. People’s lives, of course, are also in danger. To protect themselves and their families from this virus, people need to know what they can do, like get vaccines that are safe and effective.
Misinformation is a big reason why many people in the United States don’t get vaccinated even though they should be. Most people who say they won’t get vaccinated have heard at least one myth about vaccines and either believe it or aren’t sure if it’s true. This is based on a Kaiser Family Foundation survey that has been going on for a long time. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly half of all Americans get their news from social media on a regular basis. It’s important for social networks to play a role in getting rid of these kinds of false stories.
While it’s often said that dealing with misinformation is impossible, it’s actually much easier than it looks. Social media companies can shut down the accounts of people who post misinformation a lot or who have a lot of power, like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
One reason it is so important is that most of the misinformation on social media comes from a very small number of accounts. For example, according to internal Facebook documents seen by the Wall Street Journal, half of the posts made in Facebook groups that were closed because of misinformation about pandemics were made by just 5% of the group’s users. When Facebook shuts down the accounts of a small group of people who spread dangerous information the most, they call them “big whales.” This is one way to help solve this problem.
“If we see bad information on the platform, we take it down. Because we don’t do that, “Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, said in a CBS interview in August that he doesn’t think that people should be able to buy things on the “Is everything caught? There are, of course, things we need to work on or things we need to improve.”
Also, look for people who have a lot of followers, because their posts are likely to be very important. There were more than 465,000 people who liked Marjorie Taylor Greene personal account.
If you think about it this way: But for a long time, social networks did the opposite. There is a programme called “Cross-Check” that Facebook has been running for a long time that protects the accounts of famous people from automatic penalties that would apply to other users who post misinformation, hate, or other content that doesn’t follow the company’s rules.
That’s crazy. People who are in the public eye have a lot of power because their stories are so important, so it’s important that they be held accountable for following the rules. Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, told the Wall Street Journal that the “Cross-Check” programme was created for a very important reason: to make sure that we can properly enforce our policies on content that might need more explanation. In October, the oversight board said that it had agreed to look at the programme and make suggestions about how it could be changed, after the company asked for it.
Time to stop. A person should close an account if it spreads false information about vaccines. It’s done. If you’re well-known or powerful, you shouldn’t get a free pass.
This is not a question of free speech. Information that puts people’s lives at risk doesn’t help people have a good conversation about the world around them. That’s why, as I’ve said before, there is a lot of history of limiting it.
It would also send a strong message to other users that they, too, could lose their social media accounts if they spread misinformation. If social networks enforced this rule across the board, it would also send a strong message to other users. That would also likely stop the flow of false claims.
It doesn’t take long to figure out how social networks can stop the spread of many dangerous myths about the coronavirus, like that it can kill you. Then they’ll need to show some strength and be willing to stand up to powerful people when they break the rules. Marjorie Taylor Greene was the right choice for Twitter to make. One of the most powerful people on Facebook and Twitter has also been banned: former President Trump. Facebook and Twitter did this because his social media actions led to an attack on the Capitol in 2017. It’s now up to other tech leaders who have the courage to say this every time a powerful person uses their platform to harm people.
