Twitter Announces It Will Enforce The 'Civic Integrity Policy' In Preparation For 2022 Midterms: "We'll Take Action Against Misleading Claims"
The 2022 midterms are right around the corner, and Twitter has announced that it will be enforcing something called the Civic Integrity Policy. Most of the responses are criticizing the social media platform for simply using this policy to usher in more censorship.
Twitter has become infamous for censoring countless people on the platform for virtually no reason at all. People have been kicked off for using the word "groomer" when referring to pedophiles, for using the "incorrect" pronouns, and for posting videos of investigative journalism (such as Project Veritas). On Thursday, Twitter Safety announced that they will be enforcing the Civic Integrity Policy once again in time for the midterms, and people can't help but assume that this will be yet another chance for them to censor various users.
Twitter Announces It Will Enforce the 'Civic Integrity Policy' in Preparation for 2022 Midterms
"Starting today, we’ll begin enforcing the Civic Integrity Policy in context of the US 2022 midterms," Twitter Safety tweeted. The tweet included a link to the Twitter website where details on this policy are listed. The website claims that the policy is designed to "prepare for elections, elevate credible information, and help keep you safe on Twitter." Apparently, people need to be protected on social media when an election is happening.
"Using external data and internal country-based metrics, we assess the potential for online or offline harm — in line with the Twitter Rules, threats to human safety and security, the potential for false or misleading information about civic processes, and human rights concerns," the website read.
Part of this work includes adding candidate labels to help identify official political candidates, monitoring trends, prompting people to read an article before they retweet it, etc.
"This means we’ll take action against misleading claims about the voting process, misleading content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in the election, or misleading claims that may undermine public confidence in elections outcomes," Twitter Safety tweeted in a thread.
The thread has 582 likes and more than 2,700 comments. People are accusing Twitter of using this as an opportunity to senselessly censor users that don't fall in line with mainstream thought.
"Is the Hunter laptop story still Russian disinformation?" one user responded. "Can you please redirect your energy to removing child p0rn0graphy?" another person tweeted. "You mean the arbitrary determination by the politically biased individuals working at Twitter that deem anything that isn't in support of liberals is 'misinformation'?" another user tweeted.
People are rightfully skeptical that this policy has anything to do with keeping people "safe" and everything to do with controlling the public conversation in a way that will favor one side of the political aisle.