Twitter said Monday it will enable users to check for misleading tweets, the company’s latest attempt to combat misinformation.
Users participating in the program, called Birdwatch, may add annotations to refute false or misleading messages and assess the reliability of the annotations made by other users. Users in the United States who verify their email addresses and phone numbers with Twitter and who have not violated Twitter rules in the past few months may apply to join Birdwatch.
Twitter will launch Birdwatch as a small pilot program with 1,000 users, and the fact check they provide will not be visible on Twitter, but on a separate website. If the experiment is successful, Twitter plans to expand the program to more than 100,000 people in the coming months and their contributions will be visible to all users.
Twitter continues to struggle with misinformation on the platform. In the months leading up to the US presidential election, Twitter added fact-check labels written by its own employees to tweets from prominent accounts, temporarily eliminated its recommendation algorithm, and added more context to trending topics. Still, false allegations about the coronavirus and elections on Twitter have increased, despite efforts by the company to remove it. But Twitter has also faced backlash from some users who have argued that the company is removing too much information.
Giving some control over moderation directly to users can help restore trust and move the company faster to address false claims, Twitter said.
“We apply labels and add context to tweets, but we do not want to limit efforts to circumstances where something violates our rules or enjoys widespread public attention,” Keith Coleman, vice president of product at Twitter, wrote in a blog post in which he announced. the program. “We also want to increase the range of voices that are part of tackling this issue, and we believe that a community-driven approach can help.”