The popular platform just launched the heavily anticipated forum, Birdwatch. Over the past year, Twitter has been battling misleading tweets. From pandemic myths to American presidential election fake news.
The platform tried to get ahead and delete such posts but the incessant spillages proved to be too much to handle . Creating the need for the Birdwatch program.
It is inspired by how the online encyclopedia; Wikipedia collaboratively moderates its content. “Birdwatch allows users to identify tweets that are false, and provide informative context based on the misinformation.” Twitter Vice President of Product Keith Coleman wrote in a blog.
The project is only available to a small set of users on a site separate from Twitter and based on a first-come, first-served basis. Participants can rate each other to prevent bad-faith users from gaming the system and labeling true Tweets as false.
Notes concerning false information will be made visible to the public after a broad and diverse consensus among contributors. The approach seems to be Twitter’s answer to their misinformation menace as it reacts quickly to prevent its spread.
More than 100 people the company interviewed said the Birdwatch notes helped them understand tweets better. The project is currently exclusively available in the US.
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Alfred Gitonga is a passionate tech news writer with a deep interest in smartphones and related technologies. He is a staff writer at Mobitrends.co.ke.
