Is this really ‘good’ news? Today, just weeks out from the US Midterms, Twitter announced that it’ll be expanding its experimental Birdwatch crowd-sourced fact-checking program as a means to combat growing misinformation throughout the app. Based on available examples so far, Birdwatch, which Twitter launched early last year, allows participants to highlight information within Tweets that they believe is misleading, as well as add notes to add more context.
Look At The Flock
Anyone can apply to become a Birdwatch contributor, so long as they have a verified phone number, no recent Twitter rule violations, and have been using the app for a minimum of six months. The process then cross-matches the contributions from Birdwatch participants to highlight the notes rated as being the most helpful, based on a range of qualifiers, with all Birdwatch notes available for anyone to see.
It’s honestly an interesting approach to content moderation, putting more onus on the user community to define what is and what isn’t acceptable, as opposed to leaving the decision to just Twitter’s internal moderation teams. And apparently, it works, with Twitter saying, according to its own research, that people who see Birdwatch notes are 20 – 40% less likely to agree with the contents of a potentially misleading Tweet than someone who sees the Tweet alone. Twitter also says that people who see Birdwatch notes are 15 – 35% less likely to Like or Retweet a Tweet than someone who sees the Tweet alone.
So it seems that it’s making an impact and could actually be a good way to dispel misinformation, even if it does seem a little risky putting such rulings in the hands of users. Either way, Twitter seems confident enough to move ahead with more experiments. To summarize, more applicants will now be accepted into the Birdwatch program, expanding the pool of citizen fact-checkers. At the same time, Twitter says that it’ll also be rolling out an updated Birdwatch onboarding process, which will better incentivize contributors to thoughtfully write and rate notes.
It’s a pretty simple model really – more fact-checkers means more notes highlighted, which would then equate to more incentive for contributors to contribute to the ratings’ quality. It’s a significant expansion of the program, which has at least shown good results thus far. But then, there’s also this:
“Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking program, Birdwatch, accepted a QAnon supporter account into its ranks, according to a leaked internal audit. To make matters even worse, Twitter had been warned by experts ahead of time that this exact scenario might be possible.”
An expansion of the Birdwatch program, though mainly beneficial, is not without its flaws. Making Birdwatch a bigger program also makes it a bigger target – as it becomes a more prominent element, it’ll also make more bad actors pay attention to the option as a vector for influence. This doesn’t mean that Twitter can’t and won’t counter such attempts, but it is something to look out for, especially now when the US Midterms are just around the corner.
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