Twitter is calling on its users to help combat misinformation about its service by flagging and reporting misleading and false tweets.
The pilot program unveiled Monday, called Birdwatch, allows a pre-selected group of users – for now only in the US – to sign up via Twitter. Those wishing to sign up must have a US-based telephone company, verified email and phone number, and no recent violations of the Twitter rules.
Twitter said it wants experts and non-experts alike to write Birdwatch notes. It cited Wikipedia as a site that thrives with non-expert contributions.
“When testing concepts, we’ve seen non-experts write concise, useful, and easy-to-understand notes, often citing valuable expert resources,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Twitter, along with other social media companies, has been looking for ways to best combat misinformation about its service. Despite tightened rules and enforcement, untruths about the US presidential election and the corona virus continue to spread.
But if it can work, Twitter will have to anticipate abuse and bad actors trying to play the system to their advantage.
For example, to remove unhelpful or trolled notes, Twitter plans to associate each note with a “helpfulness score” and will label the helpful ones as “currently helpful.”
The company said Birdwatch will not replace other labels and fact-checking that Twitter currently uses – primarily for election and COVID-19-related disinformation and misleading messages.
The program starts with 1,000 users and eventually expands outside the US.
Twitter said it tries to ensure that Birdwatch has a wide variety of perspectives and participants – an ongoing problem with Wikipedia, where many of the contributors and editors are white men.
“If we have more candidates than pilot slots, we will randomly admit accounts, prioritizing accounts that tend to follow different audiences and content than existing participants,” wrote Twitter.