Twitter launches Birdwatch, in an attempt to fight against fake news and other disinformation

Twitter Birdwatch

Social platforms, at least the most popular ones, must act, at a certain level, on the content they convey. To fight in particular fake news and disinformation.

Fake news and other bad information would be much more difficult to exist without the presence of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and other. This is an aspect that must be reckoned with today in our society. And these super-popular giant platforms act, to some extent, against this dangerous content. Twitter, for example, launches a new tool in this sense.

Twitter launches Birdwatch tool to fight fake news

Fake news is a real scourge, some people do not take the time to read an entire article or learn about other sources before sharing this or that information. This means that even if the person did not actually intend to share false information, they still do. And that’s a concern that social platforms, at least some, are trying to address.

by involving the public

Twitter has just announced the launch of a brand new platform called Birdwatch. Rather than relying on Twitter’s own moderators and other algorithms to identify fake news, Birdwatch is appealing to the public.

According to the statement released by the social microblogging service: “Birdwatch allows people to identify information in tweets that they believe can be misleading and write comments to add contextual notions. We are convinced that this approach has the potential to offer a rapid response early on in the spread of false information, adding context that people can draw on and find interesting. Ultimately, we plan to make these notes visible directly in tweets for all Twitter users, where there is a clear consensus on the part of a large number of contributors. ”

Twitter recognizes that there could be some startup problems, during which time the whole could be very messy as users accidentally (or entirely on purpose) try to identify legitimate posts as misleading, but the platform form believes it is worth a try. Who knows, maybe we’ll have something useful for the good of the account. For those who are interested, you can go to the Birdwatch project page for more information.