Twitter unveils new search feature to curb false news about vaccines

Twitter has introduced new features in its platform that will help users to find credible resources about vaccines. As the measles infection is spreading in the United States and other countries and is getting worse every day, the micro-blogging website is improving its platform for the good.

These new features will also stop Twitter to auto-suggest search items that would lead the user to misinformation about vaccines.

Del Harvey the Twitter vice president of trust and safety wrote in a blog post, “at Twitter, we understand the importance of vaccines in preventing illness and disease and recognize the role that Twitter plays in disseminating important public health information. We think it’s important to help people find reliable information that enhances their health and well-being.”

If a user searches for keywords related to vaccines, they will see a prompt from Twitter which will direct them to resources from the website’s information partners. In the US this is Vaccines.gov, which is a website given by the Department of Health and Human Services. A pinned tweet will also appear on your screen from one of Twitter’s partners.

In addition to the US, the vaccine information tools will also appear in Twitter’s websites in Canada, Brazil, Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. Moreover, this tool will appear on iOS and Android apps as well.

Earlier this week, the Disease Control and Prevention centers in the US has said that the measles cases in the US had increased to 839 this year, and these cases have been reported in 23 states, with the majority of them reported in New York.

Social media websites recently faced a severe backlash for not doing enough to prevent the spread of wrong information regarding vaccines. But as the measles cases started to rise around the world the social media websites started taking measures to contribute in this matter.