Fake news culture amid coronavirus has started to spread again and many sites are taking measures to ban platforms that promote false information. On Wednesday, Twitter locked the account of the conservative site The Federalist for giving people wrong advice of coming out of their houses for “chickenpox parties’.
Source: The Daily Beast
The insane idea was to expose humans to the chickenpox virus deliberately and spread the infection among young and healthy people staying under quarantine.
Twitter removed the post as it violated the social media platform’s policies and The Verge informed that a spokesperson from Twitter said that “the account was temporarily locked for violating the Twitter Rules regarding COVID-19.”
As part of their strategy to deal with coronavirus information, Twitter has said that it would ban pandemic-related content that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”
Source: The Verge
So this means that any tweet that denies treatment or suggests alternative cures that have not been approved by verified organizations would be removed. If any account tries to encourage the breach of social distancing policy, it would be banned for a period depending on the level of violation.
The Federalist tweeted an article where an Oregon physician was encouraging people to “seriously consider a somewhat unconventional approach”. However, “unconventional” was just a codeword for promoting unhealthy and counterproductive measures.
Hospitals and other health facilities are already short-staffed and relief funds have been established to collect money for the equipment. Therefore, causing deliberate infections is like murder and with coronavirus already present in the air, this is absolute nonsense. We can’t believe a sane individual even suggested the idea, let alone people mindlessly retweeting just for the hell of it.
Source: mediaite
We are living during a global crisis that is nowhere close to getting solved and there have been thousands of deaths so far. The economy and education system are suffering and the lives of many paramedics are dwelling on the brink of uncertainty. Right now, America is third on the list of the most affected countries but The Federalist did not feel any shame before promoting such an article.
Even though people are observing self-isolation, the CDC is still trying to find ways to overcome the spread of the virus. President Trump is doing nothing but presenting magical solutions to the problems like “It will go away miraculously” so the little information people are receiving is from social media.
Other Republicans are also not openly discussing the issues associated with the virus as so far, the USA has no set plan to deal with the crisis. So amid this chaos, it is very important to filter all the false information and focus on what the experts are saying.
Although Twitter was efficient in removing the article, it was reported elsewhere but they did put up a warning on the content saying that it was “potentially harmful or associated with a violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service.”
Therefore, if you come across any information that is not verified by your local health organizations or the WHO, please refrain from following those measures. Stay at home and ensure you protect yourself and others so we can come out on the top by defeating this virus.