  In this paper, we analyzed the perceived accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine Tweets
when they were spoken back by a third-party Amazon Alexa skill. We mimicked the
soft moderation that Twitter applies to COVID-19 misinformation content in both
forms of warning covers and warning tags to investigate whether the third-party
skill could affect how and when users heed these warnings. The results from a
304-participant study suggest that the spoken back warning covers may not work
as intended, even when converted from text to speech. We controlled for
COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and political leanings and found that the
vaccination hesitant Alexa users ignored any type of warning as long as the
Tweets align with their personal beliefs. The politically independent users
trusted Alexa less then their politically-laden counterparts and that helped
them accurately perceiving truthful COVID-19 information. We discuss soft
moderation adaptations for voice assistants to achieve the intended effect of
curbing COVID-19 misinformation.
