SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter says it has begun labeling tweets that include misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines and using a “strike system” to eventually remove accounts that repeatedly violate its rules.
The company said Monday that it has started using human reviewers to assess whether tweets violate its policy against COVID vaccine misinformation. Eventually, the work will be done by a combination of humans and automation, it said.
Twitter had already banned some COVID-related misinformation in December, including falsehoods about how the virus spreads, whether masks are effective and the risk of infection and death.
“Through the use of the strike system, we hope to educate people on why certain content breaks our rules so they have the opportunity to further consider their behavior and their impact on the public conversation,” Twitter said in a blog post Monday.
People with one violation — or strike — will see no action. Two strikes will lead to an account being locked for 12 hours. Five or more will get a user permanently banned from Twitter.
Facebook has also stepped up its vaccine misinformation fight after years of half-hearted enforcement. It announced an expanded policy last month that includes all vaccines — not just those against COVID-19.
San Francisco-based Twitter said the new labels only apply to COVID vaccines, not others.
At least 18 protesters were killed in Myanmar on Sunday, in the deadliest day of clashes between pro-democracy protesters and security forces since a Feb. 1 military coup.But as peaceful protesters face off against the police and military on the streets, another war is being waged online.
On Thursday, Facebook banned Myanmar’s military from its platforms with immediate effect. It’s the strongest action the company has taken against the armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, or indeed those in power in any nation.
It is also the culmination of a years-long dance between Facebook and Myanmar’s military, which infamouslyused the platform to spread hate speech and disinformationabout the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority in the years leading up to 2017, in a campaign that ended in mass murder, rape and arson, which the U.N. said was carried out with“genocidal intent.”
Amid global outcry over Facebook’s role in those events, the company admitted in 2018 that it did not do enough to prevent the abuse of its platform leading to offline harm.
Since then, Facebook has banned individual military leaders in Myanmar as well as prominent nationalists. It also poured resources into tackling hate speech and disinformation, and hired a dedicated staff in the country. But until Thursday it had not banned the military as an entity, perhaps in a bid to ensure it could retain continued access to Myanmar, where it is synonymous with the Internet for half the population.
Hkun Lat/Getty ImagesProtesters defend themselves with makeshift shields during clashes with riot police on February 28, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar.
After Myanmar began to emerge from its prior period of military dictatorship in 2011, Facebook became central to daily life. By initially allowing its app to be used without incurring data charges, Facebook quickly became the core Internet service for many newly-online Burmese. The site offered a space for public discourse and a hub for commerce, as well as a vital tool for activists, human rights campaigners and a nascent pro-democracy movement in a previously closed society.
“Facebook has had a pretty rough history in Myanmar, and it’s true their platform was abused for genocidal purposes a few years ago,” says David Kaye, a former U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of expression. “I don’t know why they’ve taken so long to get to this point, but part of it may be that they genuinely and in good faith wanted to maintain the platform for the millions of users in the country who really rely on it.”
How Facebook decided to ban the military
All of that changed after the coup on Feb. 1, when the Tatmadaw removed the civilian government of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, claiming that her pro-democracy movement’s landslide victory in November elections was a result of voter fraud.
After protesters began using Facebook to coordinate the civil disobedience movement in reaction to the coup, the military temporarily blocked the site nationwide on Feb. 4, and imposed a rolling overnight curfew on Internet access. Facebook is still blocked by most Internet service providers in Myanmar, according to Arturo Filasto, project leader of the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), an internet censorship watchdog. But the site is still accessible via virtual private networks (VPNs), which have been widely taken up by Internet users in the country.
Announcing its ban of the Tatmadaw on Thursday, Facebook said that repeated violations of its rules by the military since the coup, including “content that violates our violence and incitement and coordinating harm policies,” had contributed to its decision.
“Events since the February 1 coup, including deadly violence, have precipitated a need for this ban,” said Rafael Frankel, a Facebook policy director, in a statement. “We believe the risks of allowing the Tatmadaw on Facebook and Instagram are too great.”
The ban goes beyond official accounts and military leaders. It also prevents military-owned businesses — in sectors from tourism to banking — from advertising on Facebook, using for reference a 2019 U.N. report on the government’s sprawling business interests. But the ban is not all-encompassing, said a tech policy expert based in Yangon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the unsafe situation in the country. “The ban is not a massive change insofar as it doesn’t touch on the covert operations that are out there,” they said. “It’s not like the military doesn’t have other pages it can use. So there’s a lot of gray area about how broad the ban goes.”
Still, the news of the ban was welcomed by protesters on the ground as an act of “solidarity,” says Thinzar Shunlei Yi, an anti-coup activist in Myanmar. “It’s like Facebook agrees with us. It boosts our confidence, and it has strengthened our movement.”
Banning the Tatmadaw now places Facebook firmly on the side of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. What happens next could set a precedent not just in Myanmar but globally, where American social media platforms are increasingly caught between their commitments to freedom of expression, and authoritarian leaders who have the power to punish the platforms—and even oust them from their countries.
Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesSecurity forces intervene in protesters as they gather to protest against the military coup in Mandalay, Myanmar on February 28, 2021.
A new precedent, or an exception that proves the rule?
Around the globe, Facebook and other social media companies have been making tradeoffs with leaders for years both democratic and authoritarian. But unlike Facebook’s recent decision in Myanmar, these tradeoffs have tended to prioritize reducing the risk of government retaliation that might expel the social media platforms from lucrative foreign markets.
In Vietnam, for example, Facebook has increasingly complied with demands from the authoritarian government to silence criticism on the platform, in what Facebooksaidwas a decision “to ensure our services remain available and usable for millions of people in Vietnam, who rely on them every day.”
And internal Facebook emails from 2018, recentlyrevealed by ProPublica, show that senior executives including COO Sheryl Sandberg agreed to comply with a demand from the Turkish government to block the page of a Kurdish opposition group within the country, in order to prevent Facebook being cut off in Turkey.
In a statement to ProPublica about the Turkey emails, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said: “We strive to preserve voice for the greatest number of people. There are, however, times when we restrict content based on local law even if it does not violate our community standards.”
At the same time, governments around the world are ramping up the number of demands they make on social media platforms likeFacebookandTwitter.
Just last month, Twitter was forced to block several tweets by anti-government protesters in India, after the government slapped the company with a legal order. Twitter had earlierpushed back against the demand, saying the tweets constituted free speech, but after New Delhi threatened Twitter staff in the country with charges that could result in jail time, Twitterreimposedcountry-specific blocks on many of the tweets.
Kaye, the former U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of expression, says that when authoritarian governments make demands on social media companies, the companies’ responses—which almost always carry implications for human rights—inevitably blur together with questions about the best business decision for the company.
“We saw in the Turkey example that those discussions ultimately get pushed up to the most senior level, out of the area of human rights policy and into the zone of a kind of business decision,” says Kaye. “I don’t think it’s clear to anybody on the outside which elements predominate there.”
So is Facebook’s ban of the Tatmadaw in Myanmar a new precedent for how social media platforms will stand up to authoritarian leaders around the world in the future? Or is it the exception that proves the rule?
Even Yi, the activist who welcomed Facebook’s ban of the Tatmadaw as a sign of the company’s solidarity with the pro-democracy movement, says that Facebook may have treated it as simply another business decision, perhaps mindful of the public relations disaster that the targeting of the Rohingya was for the company.
“I think they risked it, because the impact if they didn’t do it now would have been unimaginable,” she says. “They would face similar accusations just like they faced during the Rohingya crisis — they can’t risk their reputation like that.”
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s laws forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news are ready to take effect, though the laws’ architect said it will take time for the digital giants to strike media deals.
The Parliament on Thursday passed the final amendments to the so-called News Media Bargaining Code agreed between Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday.
In return for the changes, Facebook agreed to lift a ban on Australians accessing and sharing news.
Rod Sims, the competition regulator who drafted the code, said he was happy that the amended legislation would address the market imbalance between Australian news publishers and the two gateways to the internet.
“All signs are good,” Sims told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“The purpose of the code is to address the market power that clearly Google and Facebook have. Google and Facebook need media, but they don’t need any particular media company, and that meant media companies couldn’t do commercial deals,” the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair added.
The rest of the laws had passed in Parliament earlier, so they can now be implemented.
Google has already struck deals with major Australian news businesses in recent weeks including News Corp. and Seven West Media.
Frydenberg said he was pleased to see progress by Google and more recently Facebook in reaching commercial deals with Australian news businesses.
But Country Press Australia, which represents 161 regional newspapers across the country, has raised concerns that tiny publications outside large cities might miss out.
Sims said he was not surprised that the platforms would strike deals with the large city businesses first.
“I don’t see any reason why anybody should doubt that all journalism will benefit,” Sims said.
“There things take time. Google and Facebook don’t have unlimited resources to go around talking to everybody. I think this has got a long way to play out,” he added.
Chris Moos, a lecturer at Oxford University’s Business School, said the latest amendments amounted to a “small victory” for Zuckerberg.
Moos said the legislation would likely result in small payouts for most Australian news publishers. But Facebook could again block Australian news if negotiations broke down.
The legislation was designed to curb the outsized bargaining power of Facebook and Google in their negotiations with Australian news providers. The digital giants would not be able to abuse their positions by making take-it-or-leave-it payment offers to news businesses for their journalism. Instead, in the case of a standoff, an arbitration panel would make a binding decision on a winning offer.
Frydenberg and Facebook confirmed that the two sides agreed to amendments to the proposed legislation. The changes would give digital platforms one month’s notice before they are formally designated under the code. That would give those involved more time to broker agreements before they are forced to enter binding arbitration arrangements.
A statement Tuesday by Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president for news partnerships, added that the deal allows the company to choose which publishers it will support, including small and local ones.
Frydenberg said his department will review the code within a year to “ensure it is delivering outcomes that are consistent with government’s policy intent.”
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s government announced on Tuesday that Facebook has agreed to lift its ban on Australians sharing news after a deal was struck on legislation that would make digital giants pay for journalism.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook confirmed in statements that they had reached agreement on amendments to proposed legislation that would make the social network and Google pay for news that they feature.
Facebook blocked Australian users from accessing and sharing news last week after the House of Representatives passed the draft law late Wednesday.
The Senate will debate amended legislation on Tuesday.
“The government has been advised by Facebook that it intends to restore Australian news pages in the coming days,” Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said in a statement.
(CANBERRA, Australia) — Facebook announced Thursday it has blocked Australians from viewing and sharing news on the platform because of proposed laws in the country to make digital giants pay for journalism.
Australian publishers can continue to publish news content on Facebook, but links and posts can’t be viewed or shared by Australian audiences, the U.S.-based company said in a statement.
Australian users cannot share Australian or international news.
International users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news.
“The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” Facebook regional managing director William Easton said.
“It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter,” Easton added.
The announcement comes a day after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described as “very promising” negotiations between Facebook and Google with Australian media companies.
Frydenberg said after weekend talks with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google, he was convinced that the platforms “do want to enter into these commercial arrangements.”
Frydenberg said he had had a “a constructive discussion” with Zuckerberg after Facebook blocked Australian news.
“He raised a few remaining issues with the Government’s news media bargaining code and we agreed to continue our conversation to try to find a pathway forward,” Frydenberg tweeted.
But communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government would not back down on its legislative agenda.
“This announcement from Facebook, if they were to maintain this position, of course would call into question the credibility of the platform in terms of the news on it,” Fletcher told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“Effectively Facebook is saying to Australians information that you see on our platforms does not come from organizations that have editorial policies or fact-checking processes or journalists who are paid to do the work they do,” Fletcher added.
The Australian Parliament is debating proposed laws that would make the two platforms strike deals to pay for Australian news.
The Senate will consider the draft laws after they were passed by the House of Representatives late Wednesday.
Both platforms have condemned the proposed laws an unworkable. Google has also threatened to remove its search engine from the country.
But Google is striking pay deals with Australian news media companies under its own News Showcase model.
Seven West Media on Monday became the largest Australian news media business to strike a deal with Google to pay for journalism.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has since announced a wide-ranging deal.
Rival Nine Entertainment is reportedly close to its own pact and ABC is also in negotiations.
News plays a larger part in Google’s business model than it does in Facebook’s.
Easton said the public would ask why the platforms were responding differently to the proposed law that would create an arbitration panel to set a price for news in cases where the platforms and news businesses failed to agree.
“The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news,” Easton said.
Peter Lewis, director of the Australia Institute’s Center for Responsible Technology think tank, said Facebook’s decision “will make it a weaker social network.”
“Facebook actions mean the company’s failures in privacy, disinformation, and data protection will require a bigger push for stronger government regulation,” Lewis said. “Without fact-based news to anchor it, Facebook will become little more than cute cats and conspiracy theories.”
Users of red-hot social media platform Clubhouse in China said they were unable to use the app on Monday, after an explosion of discussions over the weekend on taboo topics from Taiwan to Xinjiang.
Reports of users being unable to use the invite-only, audio-based app appeared on other social-media platforms such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat and Sina Corp.’s microblogging platform Weibo. On Twitter, which is blocked in China, users claiming to be in the country posted screenshots of Clubhouse’s home screen saying that an error had occurred and that a secure connection to the server could not be made.
Clubhouse had erupted among Chinese users over the weekend, with thousands joining discussions on contentious subjects undisturbed by Beijing’s censors.
On the app, where users host informal conversations, Chinese-speaking communities from around the world gathered to discuss China-Taiwan relations and the prospects of unification, and to share their knowledge and experience of Beijing’s crackdown on Muslim Uighurs in the far west region of Xinjiang.
Until mainland-based users began experiencing technical difficulties, Clubhouse was gaining traction in mainland China. The hashtag #Clubhouse attracted more than 51 million views on Weibo, while the question “Why Clubhouse is so popular” generated hundreds of answers on Zhihu, a Chinese Q&A site. The surge in interest also created a new business, as dozens of stores on Alibaba’s online marketplaces appeared to be selling invitation codes to the app for as much as 288 yuan ($44.60) each.
The company did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
In recent months, several former Bachelor cast members have used their Instagram accounts to promote the fertility awareness app Natural Cycles as a method of contraception. The celebrities touting the app to their millions of followers have sent up red flags to health experts. Some say the app and its messaging presents a simplified, and possibly misleading, understanding of how its users can avoid getting pregnant.
Natural Cycles is a popular fertility-tracking app that relies on an algorithm that calculates the days of the month a woman is likely to be fertile based on basal body temperature readings and menstrual cycle data. It gives users a thermometer for daily temperature checks and claims to indicate when the user is ovulating and should either abstain from sex or use protection to prevent pregnancy. In 2018, it became the first app to be cleared for marketing as a contraceptive by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after being certified as a contraceptive in the European Union in 2017. While there’s nothing out of the ordinary about reality TV influencers advertising products on their social media accounts, these particular posts provide an incomplete—and therefore, potentially harmful—picture of how effective fertility awareness methods (FAMs) are at preventing pregnancy.
In the caption of a Jan. 25 Instagram post promoting Natural Cycles, former Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise contestant Tia Booth wrote that she began using the app as an alternative contraception method to hormonal birth control.
“When I got off [birth control pills] I didn’t want to take any synthetic hormones so was tracking my cycle by counting days on my calendar through a period tracker, which ummm is not reliable,” the post reads. “Thankfully, my friend told me about [Natural Cycles], the first and only FDA cleared birth control app, and I’ve been using it ever since.”
At least six Bachelor Nation alums have posted ads for Natural Cycles over the past few months, promoting the app to over 4 million collective followers. However, the ads do not say that FAMs are widely considered one of the least effective contraception methods. Obtaining accurate basal body temperature readings isn’t as simple as these Instagram posts make it seem, says Dr. Katherine Varda Schwab, an OB/GYN in Seattle. And an incorrect reading could potentially mislead users into thinking they’re not ovulating.
“Taking your basal body temperature should be done before you move out of bed in the morning. And depending on how well you wake up, getting that accurate reading is really difficult and usually takes months of practice, because you literally have to do it before you get up to pee or move your body,” Schwab says. “So you have to reach over and take your temperature and then have the wherewithal to record it as well. It’s difficult for most people to do.”
Schedule variations like sleeping during the day or waking up later or earlier than you normally do can also affect your basal body temperature, Dr. Jennifer Chin, a complex family planning fellow completing a rotation at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says. “When you’re looking at fluctuations as small as 0.2 degrees, if you’re relying on that to tell you when you’re ovulating, some of these factors can definitely affect your temperature in that range.”
Natural Cycles claims to be 98% effective with perfect use and 93% effective with typical use. But while FAMs like Natural Cycles can be a safe way to prevent pregnancy for some people, they’re not foolproof.
“To use FAMs effectively you need to be very knowledgeable about your menstrual cycle, when you’re ovulating, and when you’re fertile, so that you understand when it’s safer to have sex without risking pregnancy,” Planned Parenthood says. “It’s important to know that FAMs can be inconvenient and difficult to use correctly, so they’re less effective than other types of birth control, including IUDs, the implant, or permanent birth control — all more than 99 percent effective…”
“This is one little cog in the wheel in the range of things that people can use for contraception. And it feels good for a lot of people to be like, ‘Yes, I want to follow my natural cycle,'” Schwab says. “But without adequately talking about the risk of getting pregnant and being able to fully counsel somebody on what the comparative success rates [for other contraceptive methods are], I think [these influencers] are doing a disservice to the millions of people that they have influence over.”
FAMs are also usually low to no cost—although Natural Cycles costs $89.99 per year—have no side effects and can help you learn about your body and fertility.
“[FAMs] really allow the patient to become more aware of her own menstrual cycle and have a much greater awareness of her own body and her own fertility in a way that does not necessarily happen if she’s on some type of prescribed contraception,” adds Chin.
This certainly isn’t the first time that Bachelor contestants have used Instagram to advertise controversial products. With Vulture reporting in 2015 that a reality TV star with 200,000-500,000 Instagram followers could make anywhere between $3,000-$7,000 for a single promotional post, social-media endorsement deals often go hand-in-hand with a run on one of the franchise’s shows.
“Overnight you have this huge following, so all these brands are like, ‘Here, do you want to work with us?’” Kaitlyn Bristowe, the lead on Season 11 of The Bachelorette, told The Cut in 2017. “So you get offers to do the Flat Tummy Tea and the teeth whitening and all that. For somebody who has worked a regular job before, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re going to pay me to do that? Glorious.’”
As name-dropped by Bristowe, Flat Tummy Co. is one brand in particular that has come under fire in recent years for using Instagram influencers like the Bachelor stars and Kardashians to shill questionable diet products like detox teas, appetite suppressant lollipops and meal-replacement shakes.
Eating disorders are a very real issue for a lot of young people and to see Kim Kardashian actively encouraging her fans to develop an unhealthy relationship with food is terrifying and gravely concerning. pic.twitter.com/hhFYBbm8hL
But while these advertising tactics aren’t new, Natural Cycles presents a new set of issues. As Chin says, it takes a very specific patient to be a good candidate to use FAMs as contraception.
“You really need to be someone who has regular menstrual cycles that are predictable. And this requires a lot of homework and a lot of preparation,” she says. “Typically, for someone who’s considering a fertility awareness method, we recommend tracking your cycle for at least three cycles. To be a good candidate, you need to be someone who, for a consistent three months, are able to predict when you will ovulate and when you will have your menses in a very standard fashion.”
For people who have irregular periods, using FAMs as contraception can pose a high risk of unintended pregnancy, Chin says.
“If you’re someone who has irregular menses, or sometimes skips periods every other month, or has longer or shorter cycles, then this can make tracking your periods very difficult,” she says. “For people who don’t take the time to do the necessary three months or more of tracking, it can put you at very high risk for an unintended pregnancy, because you might be ovulating and not know and have intercourse during your fertile period.”
Fertility awareness apps also don’t factor in extenuating circumstances that might affect your cycle, and therefore the efficacy of the app as contraception, Chin adds.
“An app does not take into account travel that you might be doing, stress from working night shifts, stress from childcare, stress from being in a COVID-19 pandemic, stress from an argument that you had at work, and all of those things can significantly affect your cycle,” she says. “These aren’t things that would necessarily be tracked in a fertility awareness method application, and a particular stress could make the fertility awareness method unsuccessful.”
