Twitter has introduced a feature designed to bolster its efforts to combat misinformation, allowing users to add data verification notes to tweets they believe to be fake, but critics say it will target legitimate comments and allow users to remove everything that isn’t make agree with ‘.
The pilot program unveiled on Monday, called Birdwatch, takes a fact-finding approach similar to Wikipedia and will first be deployed as a standalone section of Twitter, for a small preselected set of U.S.-based systems. users.
It will allow regular users, called “Birdwatchers,” to identify tweets they believe contain inaccuracies or false information and write notes about those tweets to provide “informative context.”
According to Birdwatch, no account or tweet is free of annotation, which means users will be able to add “context” to tweets posted by media, journalists, and elected officials.
In a press release Monday, Twitter’s vice president of Product Keith Coleman said, “We believe this approach can respond quickly when misleading information is disseminated, adding a context that people trust and find valuable.”
However, critics of the new feature have been quick to point out the risk that this system could be abused to address legitimate comments.
“So basically a group of ideologically aligned people can come in here [and] remove everything they disagree on, ”wrote Ryan Ashe, a Twitter user.
Twitter did not specify whether users would face disciplinary action (such as withdrawing posts or banning accounts), both for those to whom tweets are frequently posted, and for those who repeatedly post bad posts. faith.
However, he said he wants both experts and non-experts to write Birdwatch notes. He cited Wikipedia as a thriving site with non-expert contributions.
Twitter on Monday introduced a feature designed to bolster its efforts to combat misinformation and misinformation, as it allows users to add notes to tweets they believe to be fake in an attempt to “add context” to other users.
It will allow regular users, called “Birdwatchers,” to identify tweets they believe contain inaccuracies or false information and write notes or notations to those tweets to provide “informative context.”
“In proof of concept, we have seen that non-experts write concise, useful, and easy-to-understand notes, which often cite valuable expert sources,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Twitter, along with other social media companies, has been tackling the best way to combat misinformation about its service. Despite stricter rules and enforcement, falsehoods about the 2020 election and the coronavirus continue to spread.
During the pilot phase of Birdwatch, the San Francisco-based company said it wanted to focus on making the service “resistant to manipulation attempts and ensuring that it is not dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors “.
To help remove useless or troll-created notes, for example, Twitter said it plans to attach a “utility score” to each and will label the useful ones as “currently considered useful.”
The company said Birdwatch will not replace other tags and fact checks that Twitter currently uses, primarily for election misinformation and COVID-19 and misleading posts.
The program will begin with 1,000 users and eventually extend beyond the United States.
“If we have more applicants than pilot spaces, we will admit random accounts, prioritizing accounts that tend to follow and interact with audiences and content other than those of existing participants,” Twitter wrote.
Currently, the program is only available through a separate website, but Twitter says it hopes to expand Birdwatch so that it appears to all users on its home site.
“These notes are intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, as we create Birdwatch and gain trust that produces context that people find useful and appropriate,” Coleman said.
‘Also, notes will have no effect on how people view our system’s tweets or recommendations.
“Finally, we intend for the notes to be visible directly to tweets for Twitter’s global audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.”
The image above shows an example of what Birdwatch note tweets would look like
To help remove useless or troll-created notes, for example, Twitter said it plans to attach a “utility score” to each and will label the useful ones as “currently considered useful.”
Speaking to Fox News, Twitter said Birdwatch is not a “true or false tool,” nor a “fact-checking” feature, but a way to add context to posts.
Participants will be able to write down any tweet once. They will have the option to cite source material in their annotation, including the media.
This means that users can record tweets from one media outlet by quoting tweets from other media outlets.
The company said that while it acknowledges the pilot could be “messy and sometimes has problems”, they believe “this is a model worth trying”.
“We know there are a number of challenges in building a community-driven system like this,” Coleman said, referring to potential bad actors. “We’ll focus on these things throughout the pilot.”
Twitter software engineer Jonah Grant said Birdwatchers, upon registration, will learn about the “values” of the tool, which are “helping to build understanding, act in good faith, and be useful, even for those who disagree “.
“We want people to write for a different audience than Twitter,” Grant clarified. “We want people to be helpful, even to those who disagree.”
Coleman agreed and added that on a Twitter, a user’s audience is his follower, who are “usually people who agree with you.”
“Birdwatch is a different mindset,” he told Fox, adding that a user “contributes to everyone … [including those] that they may not share the same perspective. “
It will allow regular users, called “Birdwatchers,” to identify tweets they believe contain inaccuracies or false information and write notes or notations to those tweets to provide “informative context.”
According to Birdwatch, no account or tweet is free of annotation, which means users will be able to add “context” to tweets posted by media, journalists and elected officials.
The program is currently piloted and only available through a separate website for a select number of users
Twitter has taken a more aggressive approach to misinformation on its platform in recent months. Aside from deletion, it has been based on tagging or adding context below tweets that spread misinformation.
In March, amid a spread of misinformation at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Twitter began removing “misleading and potentially harmful content” about COVID.
Two months later, he introduced tags to attach to tweets that contained unfounded conspiracies about the origins of the virus and fake cures.
In the last two weeks before the election, Twitter said it tagged some 300,000 tweets per content “in dispute and potentially misleading.”
He then took the unprecedented step to permanently suspend former President Donald Trump from the platform, after the company said it violated its policies in relation to the Capitol riots.
The move angered some who claimed that conservative discourse was being censored by the tech giant.
Similar criticisms were revived on Monday, amid concerns that Birdwatch could be mistreated for addressing legitimate comments from a minority perspective.
Talk show host Dana Loesch was one of the people who expressed this concern.
“Let’s be real: Birdwatch will primarily be a progressive gas lighting center and stores right in the center,” he tweeted Monday afternoon.
One follower agreed, writing on Twitter: “Today we present @Birdwatch, a community-based approach to censoring anything that does not support the awakened left narrative.”
Others came out to dismiss the concerns, and one user wrote, “Fact checking isn’t eliminating anything. I don’t understand why people really oppose the facts.”
In response, one user replied, “If Sean Hannity was appointed to choose the goalkeepers, you would see the problem. Left-wing editors who already infest Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. are constantly censoring facts, including some who admitted that they were true after the election.This is the point, in fact.