How Does Twitter Fight Misinformation?
Twitter's new "Birdwatch" tool lets users add notes to misleading tweets. These notes are meant to add vital context in a bid to quell rampant misinformation. In a January 25 blog post, the company said that the tool has bipartisan support across the political spectrum based on more than 100 "qualitative interviews. " All too often, a tweet doesn't tell the full story. Twitter knows this. The San Francisco, California-based tech firm has mostly approached this problem in the form of labels, slapped right below the misleading tweets in bold lettering. Where possible, Twitter has tried to add context to false claims, even linking to outside, reliable information from trusted news organizations. Sometimes, the company even hides especially inflammatory tweets, or altogether removes users as in the case of former President Donald J. Trump. Tech can be tricky. We'll be your support. GO PRO. Twitter is upping the ante with "Birdwatch," a new community-based approach to address misinformation. The pilot, which rolled out in the U.S. earlier this year, allows Twitter users to type up informative notes that provide essential context to otherwise misleading tweets. For most of 2021, those notes were only visible at birdwatch.twitter.com, but starting this month, some notes have started to appear directly on the tweets, according to TechCrunch. This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Hey there! Exciting news . Now, when youre browsing Twitter on Android, iOS, or https://t.co/lEjTtR4BGM, you may see Tweets with Birdwatch notes. Notes will appear in a card on the Tweet. Right now, this feature is only visible to pilot participants. pic.twitter.com/dyMHgawLUl  Birdwatch (@birdwatch) June 2, 2021  "We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable," Twitter wrote in a blog post announcing the Birdwatch rollout. "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." From the Birdwatch dashboardwhich looks very similar to your normal Twitter timelinethere are five sections on the left-hand side of the page. That includes "Birdwatch," "Home," "Your Notes," "Download Data," and "About." Think of Birdwatch as your home page, and recent notes as the newest content. Your Notes is where you'll find your own content, and Download Data is where you can download all Birdwatch data in the form of TSV (tab-separated values) files. Screenshot/Twitter   To join Birdwatch:  Click on Your Notes along the left rail. You should see a prompt that says "Want to join?" Click the purple button below it that says Join Birdwatch. A dialog box will pop up. Read the instructions carefully and click the purple Get Started button. Make sure you meet the requirements, which include a verified email address, a verified phone number, a trusted U.S.-based phone carrier, two-factor authentication on your account, and a clean record when it comes to Twitter rules. Click Next. From there, you'll have to check the boxes next to Birdwatch's three core values ("Contribute to build understanding," "Act in good faith," and "Be helpful, even to those who disagree"). Click Next. Finally, agree to the Birdwatch transparency rules, which state that all of your contributions will be public, even if your account is protected. Click Agree and Finish. Click Got it. You will receive a notification when your account has been processed. Twitter says that it has conducted over 100 "qualitative interviews with individuals across the political spectrum who use Twitter" and found that there is broad general support for Birdwatch. Those comments have indicated that there is value in crowdsourcing notes to add context, as opposed to Twitter or another central authority making those calls. To add further intentionality and transparency to the platform, Twitter says that it will make public all of the code that is used to create "reputation" and "consensus systems" for Birdwatch. You can find that in the Birdwatch Guide. You can check out the initial ranking system for Birdwatch here. An example of what Birdwatch notes added to tweets will look like. Twitter  Currently, that ranking system shows notes in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent tweets at the top of the pagejust like your normal Twitter timeline. If notes have received a significant number of ratings from other contributors, and certain criteria are met, the notes could move to the top of the list. Twitter may slap a header on those notes that shows that they are "currently rated helpful." Here's how Twitter explains the underlying mechanics of the system at the moment:  In short, Birdwatch computes a "smoothed helpfulness score" for each note, which is simply the proportion of ratings that say the note is helpful, smoothed by adding 5 to the denominator. Then out of all notes that have received at least three ratings, the top 3 by "smoothed helpfulness score" are annotated as "currently rated helpful" as long as the "smoothed helpfulness score" is at least 0.5. Throughout the pilot period, a member of the University of Chicago's Center for Radical Innovation for Social Change has been embedded with the Twitter team to host feedback sessions with experts "in a variety of disciplines." Twitter will take that and other expert and academic advice into consideration for further development. "We know this might be messy and have problems at times, but we believe this is a model worth trying," Twitter says. "We invite you to learn alongside as we continue to explore different ways of addressing a common problem." Let's hope this thing fully rolls out sometime in 2021, so that we can quickly label fake news and get on with our lives. This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.  Now Watch This:  This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io