- Twitter is taking steps to promote accounts that are providing the correct information about the Coronavirus situation.
- The micro-blogging platform is also trying its best to curb the COVID-19 misinformation.
- Twitter to open up a public-facing form that will help the health officials to directly request the company for account verification.
Twitter wants to make it easier for health officials to get their accounts verified. For this purpose, the company is taking steps to open up its widely known verification program to help boost accounts that are providing correct updates about the coronavirus.
Twitter is working with public health authorities around the globe to verify health officials and was successful in verifying hundreds of accounts, the company quoted in one of its tweets.
The social media platform has been taking more aggressive steps against the spread of coronavirus misinformation. They announced to ban tweets spreading coronavirus misinformation such as false cures and other incorrect pseudo-scientific information. This effort extends to now opening of verification program which is a difficult task for the company as it tends to avoid publicly discussing verification. A lot of Twitter employees have mocking referred to their inability to verify users in their bios.
Twitter along with Facebook has verified more than 800 National Health Service accounts only in the UK. The company also explained the steps that can be taken by academic institutions and other officials who are working for public health organizations to get their accounts verified.
Twitter is verifying accounts having email addresses associated with a trusted organization or institution on prior bases. The company also instructed the health officials to refer in their bio the organization they are associated with and also make sure to include a link back to their Twitter account on the page they link to.
The company is soon going to open up a public-facing form that will help the health experts to directly request Twitter for account verification. According to Kayvon Beykpour, a product lead at Twitter, the company will share a link to an intake form for health officials to fill out for verification purposes.
It would be the first time for the company to make a publicly-accessible verification request form available after it was officially suspended in 2017 (though the company continues to verify thousands of accounts quietly).
These latest changes will only be applied to health officials distributing information regarding the coronavirus. This shows that Twitter is ready to take public input of the check-in specific conditions.
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