Twitter is taking a number of steps to combat misinformation spread. In a tweet, Jane Wong, a popular Twitter app researcher, said that the company is planning to introduce warning labels to tweets that contain misleading or not up-to-date information.
With the recent surge in scams and misinformation spread, Twitter first introduced a ‘read before you retweet’ pop-up asking the users to read more about the topic before they tweet it out. Now, Twitter is adding a feature that’ll label tweets that contain un-verified or wrong information with certain labels.
According to Jane Wong, Twitter will introduce: “Get the latest,” “Stay Informed,” and “Misleading” labels to combat fake news spread. In the example she cited, Twitter labeled “Snorted 60 grams of dihydrogen monoxide and I’m not feeling so well now,” as “Get the latest.”
Twitter is working on three levels of misinformation warning labels:
“Get the latest”, “Stay Informed” and “Misleading” pic.twitter.com/0RdmMsRAEk
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 31, 2021
If someone tweets information that is not true, like in Jane’s tweet that said “We eat. Turtles eat. Therefore we are turtles,” Twitter will label the tweet as “Misleading,” and so on. At the moment, it’s a bit unclear at the moment about how the feature will be implemented.
In the past few months, Jane has leaked quite a bit of information about Twitter. Jane was the first one to reveal Twitter’s Tip Jar feature. Moreover, she was the first one who noticed the Twitter Blue subscription in Apple App Store.
We’ve seen social media platforms taking steps to combat misinformation spread. Instagram launched a ‘fact check’ feature in 2020 that hid photos that contained false information. Facebook also took some steps to combat fake news after the company was blamed for Trump’s election as President in 2016.
What are your thoughts on Twitter’s new feature? Do you think it will help in fighting fake news? Let us know in the comments section below!
