Twitter expands moderation rules for crises like wars, disasters

Twitter said Thursday that it was adding new policies aimed at combating misinformation about the war in Ukraine and other crises like natural disasters, an expansion of its rules against misleading content.

The company announced the new policy even as it is in the process of being acquired by Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who has said he intends to do away with Twitter’s content moderation policies.

Under its new rule, Twitter will downplay tweets that spread misinformation about crises like natural disasters and wars that could spread rapidly across the platform without intervention. The company will prevent users from retweeting misleading crisis content and block it from appearing in prominent areas, like the home timeline and search features.