Twitter unveils Birdwatch to fight misinformation — here's how it works

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Twitter unveils Birdwatch to fight misinformation — hither's how information technology works

(Epitome credit: Twitter)

Twitter has turned to a new resource to help gainsay the spread of disinformation on the platform: its ain users. The social media giant has revealed Birdwatch, a crowdsourced fact-checking scheme that volition have verified users flagging tweets for false or misleading content.

Birdwatch, which has been undergoing individual trials for some time, also allows these users — acting in a moderator role — to talk over flagged tweets in a separate section of the site, and add notes to tweets detailing their factual issues. The first total pilot scheme is launching imminently.

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The project is Twitter'south latest move in an ongoing attempt to preclude potentially harmful disinformation and misinformation from spreading on its turf, a trouble that worsened significantly in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.Southward. presidential election.

Twitter has previously taken the unilateral steps of applying content warnings to misleading tweets, including those of erstwhile president Donald Trump, and banning tens of thousands of accounts believed to be involved in organized disinformation campaigns. Birdwatch represents the kickoff time Twitter has involved other users in its efforts.

The initial number of Birdwatch users volition be pocket-size, though anyone with a verifiable email and phone number with a trusted U.S. carrier may apply to join the pilot. Notes on flagged tweets will too only be visible to other Birdwatch users for the fourth dimension being — there are none currently visible on this public example — merely in time Twitter hopes to make these notices visible to everyone, with Birdwatch give-and-take threads also readable as a grade of public fact-checking service.

Coming from the mayor's office soon. They want to catechumen all of our water fountains from still to sparkling! pic.twitter.com/c4Fwb75lLBJanuary 23, 2021

Come across more than

This visible, community-driven approach was apparently effective at building trust in the system, co-ordinate to the Twitter web log. Although Birdwatch is however a way from rolling out in full, it's clearly intended to exist a more than transparent alternative to the company'south own, elevation-down fact-checking, similar to how sites similar Wikipedia and Reddit are moderated.

This will, in turn, require a degree of cocky-moderation to prevent Birdwatch users mislabelling truthful tweets as misleading. This explains why Twitter makes users apply to the program and makes Birdwatch discussions publicly readable — for vetting and transparency.

Twitter, for its part, seems aware of potential shortcomings but is willing to try such a new approach. "We know this might be messy and have problems at times," wrote vice president of product Keith Coleman in the blog post, "but we believe this is a model worth trying."

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Newspaper Shotgun, but before that was Audio Editor at Tom's Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and annihilation else that intentionally makes racket. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote computing and gaming news for TG, commonly relating to how hard it is to detect graphics card stock.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/twitter-unveils-birdwatch-to-fight-misinformation-heres-how-it-works

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