KUALA LUMPUR, July 9 — Malaysians have tweeted a total of 21 million Covid-19 related tweets in the country since June 2019, Twitter said in a statement today.

The statement said Malaysians turned to Twitter as a source of truth to get tips on "panic buying”, to information on vaccines and new variants (of Covid-19).

Twitter’s Head of Public Policy, Government and Philanthropy South East Asia, Monrawee Ampolpittayanant, said at Twitter safety is top priority and the organisation is deeply committed to ensuring that people who use its service are protected against harmful misinformation, especially during times of crises.

"Recognising the important role we play in facilitating access to reliable information during the pandemic, we (Twitter) introduced our Covid-19 misinformation policy on April 3, 2020 to help Malaysians find reliable information, connect with others and follow what’s happening in real time,” she said.

Monrawee said a key aspect of the policy includes the introduction of labels to, and in some instances remove, content on the service that contain or promote harmful Covid-19 misleading information.

"When countries began rolling-out Covid-19 vaccines, Twitter expanded the Covid-19 misinformation policy to include Tweets that contained misleading information about the vaccines. Since Twitter’s introduction of its Covid-19 guidance, 11.72 million accounts have been challenged, 8,558 accounts suspended and 85,885 pieces of content removed worldwide from January 2020 to June 2022,” she said.

The statement said in Malaysia, Twitter collaborated with local partners such as the Ministry of Health (@KKMPutrajaya) to promote the nationwide #Covid19 vaccination campaign and used TwitterSpaces to connect with the public and media, providing the latest Covid-19 related information from the Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin (@Khairykj). — Bernama