Twitter launches “ Birdwatch ”, a forum to fight disinformation

Birdwatch participants can rate the ratings of others, as a mechanism to prevent bad faith users from playing with the system and falsely labeling real tweets as fake. These ratings are then assembled into a Birdwatch profile separate from a Twitter profile, much like Reddit’s user rating system.

Twitter said it hopes to create a community of “bird watchers” who could eventually help moderate and tag tweets in its main product, but won’t immediately tag them with Birdwatch suggestions.

Twitter has faced increased pressure over the past year to tackle widespread disinformation on the platform. In addition to deletion, it relied on labeling or adding context under tweets that spread misinformation. In March, in the face of a deluge of disinformation about the pandemic, he began removing “misleading and potentially harmful content” on Covid-19. In May, he had introduced tags to respond to tweets containing conspiracy theories about the disease’s origins and bogus cures.

In February, Twitter rolled out a new “manipulated media” tag, first affixing it to a tweet from then-President Donald Trump. In the months to come, he would call many more for disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and the elections. In the last two weeks before the elections, Twitter said he tagged some 300,000 tweets for “disputed and potentially misleading” content.

Twitter told NBC News it was encouraged by the early trials of the program, which continued last year. NBC News first reported a demo leak of the program, which was then titled “Community Notes,” last February.

Twitter has focused heavily on the threat of “manipulation” by what it calls “swarms” of bad actors, who may seek to use the platform as another weapon in online information wars.

“We know that there are a number of challenges to building a community system like this – from making it resistant to attempts at manipulation to ensure that it is not dominated by a simple majority or biased according to its distribution of contributors. We’re going to be focusing on these things throughout the pilot, ”Coleman wrote.

Researchers will also be able to upload bulk data to Birdwatch entries, which he hopes will “allow experts, researchers and the public to analyze or verify Birdwatch” and discourage manipulation.

“We know it can be complicated and sometimes have issues, but we think it’s a model worth trying,” Coleman wrote.