Twitter now fact-checks ‘5G coronavirus’ tweets even if they’re not conspiracy theories

We already covered some conspiracy theories that have been around the internet about COVID-19 and the 5G network. In order to avoid misinformation, Twitter is now fact-checking all tweets that mention 5G and the new coronavirus, even if they’re not conspiracy theories.

If you open Twitter now and share a new tweet with the words “5G” and “COVID-19”, “corona”, or “coronavirus” you’ll probably get a “get the facts on COVID-19” banner under your comment. You can tap the fact-checking banner to find some curated scientific articles about the 5G network and the COVID-19.

Twitter’s strategy may seem a bit aggressive as it can label a real related news story as fake news. Last month, the company started removing posts that incited people to set fire to 5G antennas around the world, and now they are monitoring all the tweets about it.

As noted by Engadget, this isn’t exactly an unexpected behavior, as Twitter mentioned the company is still improving its algorithms to identify which tweets are about conspiracy theories. Until then, most of them will be labeled with the fact-checking banner.

Labeling or placing a warning on Tweets continues to be an iterative process.  Given the global spread of misinformation and disputed claims around 5G and COVID-19, we prioritized labeling tweets with that information. Our team is currently reviewing other types of content and will label additional tweets soon.

Back in April this year, both Facebook and YouTube announced that they would remove conspiracy theories content about 5G and coronavirus, so it’s likely that other social networks will soon do the same.