Twitter to Warn Users Before Liking a Labelled Tweet With Potential Misinformation

Twitter said that the prompts on labelled tweets helped decrease quote tweets of misleading information by 29 percent.

By Tanishka Sodhi | Updated: 24 November 2020 13:08 IST

The Twitter functionality is reportedly rolling out to iOS and the Web globally this week

Highlights

Twitter will show you a warning if you try to like a labelled tweet
Tweets are labelled for potentially including misleading information
The functionality is reportedly rolling out to iOS and the Web this week

Twitter will show a warning if you try to like a tweet that has been labelled for potentially including misleading information. Twitter already showed a similar warning to users when they attempted to retweet something that had been similarly labelled, to potentially include misleading information ahead of the 2020 US election. The micro-blogging site is now expanding the functionality to liked tweets too. The new feature is rolling out to iOS and the Web globally this week, as per a report.

The prompts on labelled tweets helped decrease quote tweets of misleading information by 29 percent, according to Twitter. While tweeting the announcement that it was expanding the warning functionality to liking tweets that may contain misleading information, the company said that it was vital to give context on why a labelled tweet is misleading. Expanding the functionality could reduce the number of likes on labelled tweets that may be spreading misleading information on things like COVID-19.

The functionality is rolling out on Twitter for iOS and the Web globally this week, and will come to Android in the coming weeks, as per a report by The Verge.

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Apart from warnings ahead of retweets, Twitter recently added another restriction aimed at reducing misinformation during the time of US elections. Since the past few weeks, Twitter users must go through an additional step while retweeting. Twitter opens a window prompting users to compose a quote tweet instead of sharing it immediately. It is possible to retweet without making it a quote tweet, though, by clicking on Retweet. This was supposed to be in place until the US elections were over. However, Twitter still has not removed the restrictions, weeks after the elections.

Twitter recently revealed that it labelled 300,000 tweets related to the US presidential election as "potentially misleading" in the two weeks surrounding the vote. The labels were issued between October 27 and November 11, one week before and after the US presidential election on November 3. Of the 300,000 flagged tweets, Twitter said that 456 were covered over by a warning message and had engagement features limited.

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