Social Media Companies Blame COVID for Censorship

Social media companies still use COVID-19 staff shortages to justify removing content that doesn’t violate platform rules.

Both Twitter and Facebook scaled back human reviews of content in the early days of the pandemic. The companies employ contractors to sift through material that may break their sites’ rules, and said many contractors could not do that work from home. Two years on, both companies blame the effects of COVID-19 for erroneous content removal and the suspension of users’ ability to appeal the censorship of their content.

Both social media giants have increased content restrictions throughout the pandemic, even while claiming they can’t adequately review removals. Twitter and Facebook rolled out new initiatives to ban or hide speech that suggested COVID-19 came from a Wuhan lab, although that theory has gained traction in the scientific community. Twitter regularly suspends politicians and other users who question vaccine mandates.

Both Twitter and Facebook switched to remote work in March 2020. Twitter said at the time it would rely on “machine learning and automation” to “take a wide range of actions on potentially abusive and manipulative content,” and acknowledged that this change would lead to more mistakes and incorrect penalties for users.

Although Twitter previously said the increased use of automated systems was a temporary move during the pandemic, a Twitter spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon the company would continue to “utilize machine learning” to enforce Twitter rules. The spokeswoman did not say whether Twitter would increase human review. (Read more from “Social Media Companies Blame COVID for Censorship” HERE)

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