Twitter is taking the fight against misinformation to a whole new level by giving more control to users. Twitter has launched a new feature that allows users to flag misinformation-laden content.
The increasing number of tweets with misinformation has been growing since the pandemic. The social network announced that it was testing a new feature to allow users to report tweets that are misleading, as they see them.
Like YouTube and Facebook, Twitter is frequently criticized by those who claim that the microblogging platform doesn’t do enough to combat misinformation. The platform doesn’t have the same resources as Silicon Valley and relies on more cost-effective methods than hiring moderators.Â
Twitter New Feature: Big Picture
- A new button will be available to users in Australia, South Korea, and the United States from Tuesday. Users can click “report tweet” and select “It’s misleading” to report to Twitter about the tweet spreading misinformation.
- By making use of this option users can be more specific by flagging misleading tweets that may contain misinformation about health, politics, or other topics.
- Twitter is relying on users community to identify and fish out tweets with misleading and false information.
- Twitter has over 206 million daily monetisable users who are considered to use the platform on regulat basis.
- The efforts to fight against misinformation have increased since the outbreak of Covid-19 and the US presidential elections.
- Twitter began blocking users who were warned five times against spreading false information about vaccinations.
- The network started flagging Trump tweets with a banner warning them of misleading content during his 2020 campaign. This was before Trump was banned from the website for inciting violence and discrediting election results.
- While Twitter’s Moderators ultimately determine which content violates its terms of service, the microbogging social network stated that it plans to eventually use an automated system that uses both human and machine analysis to identify suspicious posts.
- The concern about Covid-19 vaccine misinformation is so widespread that Biden stated in July that Facebook and other platforms are responsible for “killing people” by allowing false information to spread.
- He made the clarification that the false information was what could cause harm or even death to those who believed it.
Food For Thought
Twitter has been in hot water in many countries for not taking enough measures to stop the spread of misinformation through its platform. Quite recently, Twitter was staring at a ban in India due to the noncomplience with new IT Laws that are made with an aim to fight against misinformation on internet platforms.
How effective the new Twitter feature would be and how many Twitter users would make use of the feature actively, need to be seen in months to come. The new feature, however, will definitely cut down the number of tweets and help Twitter to come down heavily on accounts that are meant to spread false information in a more aggressive way than earlier.
