Though it may not matter as much for those outside of the US, the US midterm elections are coming up, and Twitter’s working to get ahead of any potential misuse of its platform to spread misinformation about the candidates. Twitter’s introducing a range of improved election integrity features, along with a new and curated election info hub to help amplify credible updates.

Chaos and Politics

First off, Twitter will be enforcing its Civic Integrity Policy, giving it more capacity to limit the spread of misleading Tweets. As per Twitter:

“The Civic Integrity Policy covers the most common types of harmful misleading information about elections and civic events, such as claims about how to participate in a civic process like how to vote, misleading content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in the election, and misleading claims intended to undermine public confidence in an election – including false information about the outcome of the election. Tweets with this content may be labeled with links to credible information or helpful context, and Twitter will not recommend or amplify this content in areas of the product where Twitter makes recommendations.”

Twitter launched a new set of Tweet labels last November, which included extra notes on why particular Tweets have been labeled. These add-on tags have proven to be effective in limiting the spread of false information, with Twitter reporting its updated label formats increased ‘Find out more’ and click-through rates by 17%. They’ve also led to a notable decrease in engagement with labeled Tweets.

Twitter is reportedly bringing back its ‘Prebunks’ to further limit the spread of misleading reports. Prebunks aim to provide context on potentially bogus election trends, thereby stifling false reports about the same. Furthermore, Twitter is also launching a new election info hub in Explore, with updates personally curated by Twitter’s team, along with its labels on candidate profiles to clarify who they are and what position they’re running for. Twitter will also be promoting a couple of media literacy tips on @TwitterSafety to help users self-educate on ways to avoid misinformation.

The Wrap

The combination of these initiatives should help limit the spread of misinformation around the polls, keeping Twitter users informed. This is an important thing to note because while Twitter’s audience is relatively small, compared to the other social apps, Twitter is the go-to app for real-time news and updates – much of the news that’s initially shared on Twitter often gets aggregated later on to other platforms.

Many of the most die-hard news heads and journalism enthusiasts stay updated via Tweet, and if Twitter can ensure that these people are not being fed incorrect information, then that could actually have a huge impact on the broader news ecosystem, not to mention on the results of the election.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/3dok2DK