New Twitter Birdwatch Launched: A Forum With The Mission To Fight Misinformation
Micro-blogging platform Twitter launches a new forum called 'Birdwatch,' giving members the power to moderate and label posts in a bid to fight misinformation.
Twitter launched the 'Birdwatch,' a forum that seeks to fight misinformation spreading online. The micro-blogging platform, in a statement, expressed its hopes that the forum will help establish a community of 'Birdwatchers' that can help Twitter in moderating and labeling tweets with deceptive contents.
Unveiled Monday, Twitter says the 'Birdwatch' feature can help bolster their efforts to guard against and fight misinformation and disinformation by tapping users to assist in the effort. The feature is somewhat similar to Wikipedia, where users get to flag tweets likely to contain misleading content. To encourage users from joining, the micro-blogging platform called the would-be forum users 'Birdwatchers.'
A Standalone Section
Twitter said that 'Birdwatch' is a separate unit of the micro-blogging platform and initially available only to a small group of users, primarily on a first-come, first-served basis. Twitter will not provide special treatment or prioritize traditional fact-checkers and high-profile individuals. The micro-blogging platform also revealed that 'Birdwatchers' need to have a Twitter account that is linked to a real email address and phone number.
According to Keith Coleman, Twitter's Vice President of Product, 'Birdwatch' will allow users of the micro-blogging platform to flag information in posts they believe are false or misleading. 'Birdwatchers' can also add in the post their own notes that contain informative context. "We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable," Coleman said.
A Discussion On Tweets
The company said that although the 'Birdwatch' feature is an isolated section of Twitter at the moment, the micro-blogging platform aims to eventually display their notes on suspected Tweets for the greater audience on Twitter, as long as there is a general consensus from a diverse and broad set of contributors or 'Birdwatchers.'
Company officials showed a demo of the Birdwatch feature on NBC News. It showed a separate section where 'Birdwatchers' discuss and rate tweets in a format that combines features of both Wikipedia and Reddit's moderation tools. Users can flag tweets using a dropdown menu found in the main interface of Twitter, though discussions on the veracity of the tweet remain within the Birdwatch area.
Rating Notes
Birdwatchers can also rate the notes of other participants. Twitter said this is their fail-safe mechanism seeking to stop bad-faith users from playing a trick on the system and mislabeling true tweets as containing deceptive information. Unlike the user-rating system found on Reddit, the micro-blogging platform said the system would assemble Birdwatchers' ratings into a Birdwatch profile distinct from a Twitter profile. "We know this might be messy and have problems at times, but we believe this is a model worth trying," Coleman said.