Is Twitter soft on Trump?

Social media platform's new policy to contain disinformation may not be enough, if the company only targets certain leaders

Last month, Twitter did something striking and almost unprecedented: It deleted two tweets from a world leader.
The social media platform removed the posts - both from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro - because they violated a new company policy on disinformation involving the global Covid-19 health crisis. One showed him defying the rules of isolation advocated by his own health minister and the World Health Organization; in the other, he defended the controversial use of an unproven drug to treat Covid-19.
Under Twitter's new policy, anyone caught denying established facts about the disease, propagating false or misleading information, denying scientifically established facts, or posting alleged cures for Covid-19, will have their tweets deleted.
Bolsonaro, a far-right politician, had long sought to deny or minimise the dangers of Covid-19 and encouraged businesses to remain open to save the economy. In early March, for instance, the president called the pandemic a "fantasy" and "hysteria." On March 20 and again on March 24, he described Covid-19 as a "little flu."
Bolsonaro isn't alone. In recent weeks, Twitter has also deleted misleading statements on Covid-19 from Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Rudy Giuliani, one of US President Donald Trump's lawyers. Noticeably absent from the list: President Trump himself. On April 17, Trump posted a series of Tweets in support of public protests in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia. All three tweets appear to violate Twitter's new Covid-19 rules, which don't allow posts "actively encouraging people to not socially distance themselves in areas known to be impacted by Covid-19 where such measures have been recommended by the relevant authorities." The protestors, many of whom did not wear face masks or practice social distancing, were gathered to push back on guidelines by their state governments to limit social interaction. All three states have active Covid-19 cases.
The global pandemic is also far from the first time that dangerous disinformation campaigns have flourished on social media platforms, including those promoted by world leaders. So why, experts are asking, is Twitter acting now? Will it make a difference? And why not censure Tweets from other leaders, including Trump?
Under Twitter's new policy, anyone caught denying established facts about the disease, propagating false or misleading information, denying scientifically established facts, or posting alleged cures for Covid-19 will have their tweets deleted.
Anna Brisola, a Ph.D. candidate in information sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, points to a growth in pressure from society - and even from some politicians - to find a solution to the problem of fake news. In the past, she had noted, companies like Twitter would "hesitate in the repression of fake news" because it can "generate a lot of likes, a lot of sharing, a lot of debate, a lot of data. And that means money."
But "with the pandemic frightening the world, threatening the economy and, especially, lives, fake news and rumours have become also a public health problem, standing between life and death," she adds. Media companies likely don't want to be held responsible for not acting - or the potential economic fallout. Already, there are more than 2.6 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide and the disease has killed more than 183,000 people, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. In such a crisis, Brisola says, the platforms don't want "to be labelled as the one that has no credibility."
A different economic calculation may be at play when it comes to Trump, however. Twitter is based in the US, and the Trump administration has more potential power over the company compared to Bolsonaro and other world leaders, Brisola says. It's unclear, she adds, whether Twitter will ever take down a post from Trump: "Are they willing to touch this hornet's nest?"
Still, Twitter's new policy may not be enough to contain disinformation related to Covid-19, particularly if the company only targets certain leaders. It also many not help even in cases like Bolsonaro's. After all, in Brazil, Bolsonaro's false claims still appear on other media, including on television. And they could still be shared on WhatsApp, one of the country's main social media platforms for spreading disinformation.
Under its new policy so far, Twitter says it has removed more than 1,100 tweets containing misleading and potentially harmful Covid-19 content and required more than 1.5 million suspicious accounts to verify contact information or complete a reCAPTCHA test.
On March 25, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro became the first state leader to have a tweet deleted under the policy. Also in March, Twitter deleted a post from Giuliani, who advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria remedy with uncertain effectiveness in treating Covid-19 - the same unproven drug being promoted by Bolsonaro. In Brazil, the platform deleted tweets from Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro (one of the sons of President Bolsonaro) and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles for spreading disinformation related to Covid-19.
According to Iria Puyosa, a political communication scholar from the Central University of Venezuela, the global pandemic has given "social media platforms an opportunity to establish more ironclad controls on the information disseminated by public figures, particularly political leaders."
Twitter's approach follows similar attempts by other social media platforms. In 2019, for instance, YouTube - which is owed by Google - changed its recommendation algorithms after a scandal in which the algorithms were manipulated by pedophile networks. According to Yasodara Córdova, a World Bank agile/civic tech fellow and former senior fellow of Harvard's Kennedy School, Twitter has other projects underway, including a "new 'tag' for manipulated content," - defined as media that is altered in order to mislead or deceive and that could result in serious harm - "which seems to be having some effect."
Even if policies like Twitter's can help reduce the reach of fake Covid-19 news, experts point out it is not coming soon enough. "If the companies had actively collaborated" with academics in the past, wrote Córdova, "we might have been able to do much more."
Media consumers also have a role to play, she says, which will require more education on how the digital world works. Puyosa agrees: "It would be much more useful and healthier for public debate to educate citizens on information consumption." There needs to be "an effort to regain citizen confidence on the media and journalists," she says. -undark.org
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia is a Brazilian journalist