Twitter Expands Birdwatch, Its Crowdsourced Fact Check Pilot, in US

Twitter, along with other social media companies, has been grappling how best to combat misinformation on its service.

By Associated Press | Updated: 4 March 2022 11:05 IST

Twitter Expands Birdwatch, Its Crowdsourced Fact Check Pilot, in US

Photo Credit: Twitter/ @birdwatch

Select US Twitter users will see Birdwatch notes on some tweets starting this week

Highlights

Birdwatch is a crowd-sourced fact checking project
The programme lets regular people flag and notate misleading tweets
Twitter users in US can sign up to contribute fact checks to Birdwatch

Twitter is expanding Birdwatch, its crowd-sourced fact checking project it started as a small and little-publicised pilot programme more than a year ago. The programme lets regular people flag and notate misleading tweets. This is separate from Twitter's news verification partnerships with The Associated Press and Reuters.

Starting Thursday, a small, randomised group of US Twitter users will begin to see these Birdwatch notes on some tweets, the company said. They will be able to rate them as helpful — or not.

To contribute fact checks to Birdwatch, anyone in the US can sign up if they have a verified phone number with a US carrier and no recent Twitter rule violations. They also have to agree to three rules, Twitter says: contribute to build understanding, act in good faith and be helpful, even to those who disagree.

[Sponsored] Samsung Galaxy S24: The Ultimate Camera Phone With Smarter On-Device AI

Twitter, along with other social media companies, has been grappling how best to combat misinformation on its service. Despite tightened rules and enforcement, falsehoods have continued to spread, now exasperated by the war in Ukraine and Russia's state-backed propaganda machine.

The company has said it wants both experts and non-experts to write Birdwatch notes and cited Wikipedia as a site that thrives with non-expert contributions. The ratings, meanwhile are similar to Reddit's up and downvotes for comments.

Twitter Gives More Users Access to Safety Mode

For the notes to be visible on a tweet, it must be rated helpful by enough people from “different perspectives,” Twitter said, adding that it determines different perspectives by how people have rated notes in the past — not by their demographics.

Gaana CEO and Spotify's India chief join us on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, to discuss India's unique music streaming landscape. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.