With increasing concerns about the proliferation of false or misleading information on social media, Twitter appears to be planning a way for users to provide feedback by labelling tweets from politicians and other public figures as being likely to be “harmfully misleading.”
A leaked demo, (later confirmed by Twitter) showed brightly coloured labels prominently displayed on posts which fact-checkers, journalists and even other users had identified as being misleading, and a tweet by a verified journalist or fact-checker correcting the misleading information showing directly below it.
Only Test Models
However, a Twitter spokesperson said this was only one possible iteration of a new policy by the social media platform to try and target misinformation, calling it a critical issue, that they will be testing many different ways of addressing.
This follows on from their recently announced policy of banning tweets that “deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” targeting thing like deepfakes, as well as more traditionally manipulated media.
Twitter has not announced a date for rolling out anti-misinformation features, but many speculate that with the US elections approaching, we could be seeing them fairly soon.
Another possible option in this model involved awarding “points” to Twitter users who “contribute in good faith and act like a good neighbour” and “provide critical context to help people understand information they see,” and a community reporting feature, among other features that may be rolled out in the next several weeks. (Probably to the US first.)