Twitter Inc. said Monday it has launched a pilot program that causes users to tweet what they believe is misleading and that they write notes to provide context.
The project, called Birdwatch, is initially presented in the United States, the social media firm said in a blog post.
Twitter and other social media companies were under pressure to combat misinformation on their platforms. Last year, Twitter began adding labels and warnings about misinformation on the site, including about the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. election.
Birdwatch is on a separate section of Twitter, and only launch participants, who apply for the program, will write posts that identify and refute incorrect information. Their notes will initially not be visible on Twitter to users outside the pilot group, but will be on the Birdwatch website.
Twitter said they will eventually have between 1,000 and 100,000 birdwatchers recorded on a running basis and who will not be paid.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to make notes visible directly on Tweets to the global Twitter audience, if there is consensus from a wide and diverse number of contributors,” Twitter Vice President Keith Coleman said in the blog post.
Pilot participants can assess the helpfulness of notes from other contributors.
‘We know that there are a number of challenges to building a community-driven system like this, from making it resistant to tampering efforts to ensuring that it is not dominated or biased by a simple majority, based on distribution. of contributors, ‘says Coleman in the blog post.
“We believe this is a model worth trying,” he said.
Reported by Elizabeth Culliford in New York and Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Edited by Anil D’Silva and Cynthia Osterman