Twitter will permanently ban users who repeatedly spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, the social media platform announced Monday.
Twitter said it has started applying labels to tweets "that may contain misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines" in addition to its overall effort to remove "the most harmful" misleading COVID-19 information in general.
The label reads, "This tweet may be misleading. Find out why health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines safe for most people." It may link to curated content, public health information or Twitter's rules.
Beyond that, Twitter is implementing a strike system aimed at repeat offenders. Users will be notified when a label or Tweet removal may lead to additional action by the platform. If it continues, there will be five strikes against the user.
1: No account-level action
2: Account locked for 12 hours
3: Account locked for another 12 hours
4: Account locked for seven days
5: Permanent suspension
Twitter says it has removed more than 8,400 tweets and challenged 11.5 million accounts worldwide since December over misleading COVID-19 information.