14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has announced Birdwatch, a new service whose purpose is to allow the community out there to deal with misleading tweets that could contribute to misinformation.
The purpose of this update is as simple as it could be: users who come across tweets they believe spread misinformation can just mark them and add a note to explain why they believe they should be flagged.
While at this point these notes are only available for contributors, Twitter says the purpose is to make them visible for everyone on its social platform, thus making sure only credible information is provided.
Contributors will obviously play a key role, as they are the ones deciding what content is likely to be misleading on Twitter.
“We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable. Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors,” Twitter says.
Currently exclusive to the U.S.
Birdwatch is first exclusive to the United States and the flagged tweets with the added content is only visible on a dedicated website.
“On this site, pilot participants can also rate the helpfulness of notes added by other contributors. These notes are being intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, while we build Birdwatch and gain confidence that it produces context people find helpful and appropriate. Additionally, notes will not have an effect on the way people see Tweets or our system recommendations,” the company explains.
Going forward, however, the purpose of Birdwatch is to allow the community better filter the content that everybody sees on Twitter, eventually helping deal with misinformation on the platform in a way that’s not possible if only the company is in charge of the whole thing.