Twitter Unveils Birdwatch

Twitter is trying out a new tool that can fight disinformation. We’ve seen major social media sites focusing on misinformation and fake news. Facebook decided to have its own team to handle websites that are sharing fake information on their platform.

Twitter also made a big move that would fight fake news. Twitter introduced Birdwatch, a new product that will provide a community-based approach to fake news and misinformation.

How Does it Work?

With the help of Birdwatch, users can now flag tweets that they consider as “misleading”. If you think that a particular post or tweet is fake or it is trying to mislead the other users, you can write notes to provide more context to the tweets.

Well, Twitter is limiting the characters for their tweets so by allowing users to add notes and context, the social media site can fight against misinformation without changing anything. You can also rate the notes created by others so the users can see whether the written notes are legit or not.

This particular feature is a complement to the existing system int Twitter. This system removes problematic tweets. It may seem like a great combination, but there are a few important points that might cause some problems.

The Issue with Birdwatch

Since this particular product is still new, we can understand that it still has some major flaws that should be dealt with. One of the things that Twitter should focus on is the possibility of a debate on a particular post.

It is true that people have different opinions on a certain topic. Although a specific tweet is fake, some people will try to add notes to the post to counter other people. Basically, the tweet will become a battlefield with multiple people trying to prove their point.

At the end of the day, the users who are supposed to read the post will become more confused because of the additional notes.

Twitter still needs to iron out all its features and make sure that they can handle the flurry of notes that would be added to tweets.

Final Thoughts

This is definitely a great feature as it allows the users to determine if a tweet is misleading or not. They won’t be influenced by people who are trying to instigate the users to do something.

Hopefully, Twitter will find a way to handle the issue at hand and give its users a platform free from misinformation.