Twitter has been trying to curb the spread of misinformation related to the recently held US Presidential Elections, Coronavirus pandemic, and many other issues over its platform. It has been introducing new policies to moderate content in a better way, and to provide users with the most authentic information. To decrease the frequency of retweeting and sharing false information, Twitter recently started adding labels to the tweets that contained suspicious content as ‘Disputed.’ When someone tries to retweet an already labeled tweet, Twitter immediately sends a pop-up warning to the user to check out some authentic sources to find whether the claims in this disputed tweet are true or false. This warning system has led to an estimated 29% decrease in the careless sharing of misleading tweets and articles.
Gaining confidence from their success, Twitter is now expanding this warning system. Jane Manchun Wong, a reverse engineer, has recently reported that now, when a person will try to ‘Like’ a disputed tweet, Twitter will spring a warning at them to stop and first authenticate the claims mentioned in this tweet before liking it!
Although liking a tweet does not equate to retweeting and sharing, but whenever a tweet or article is Liked by someone, the ‘Liked’ tweet or article may probably appear in that person’s followers’ feed as a topic of mutual interest.
So, inadvertently, liking a disputed or labeled tweet may still cause you to become a source of spreading false information or misinformation. In a way, this is good if Twitter is asking people to look for authentic sources to confirm the information rather than just blindly and carelessly sharing whatever appears on the internet!
A while ago, Twitter also started urging its users through pop-up messages to read a tweet or article before sharing it with others. Most people are habitual of only reading the headline of a topic, and without ever opening it to see exactly what the topic is about, they post it for others to see the same stuff, which may have a lot of inaccuracies and misinforming content.
Twitter noticed that its efforts to make people read before posting or sharing articles also yielded some good results. Almost 40% of people started opening the articles before sharing them. Therefore, Twitter is quite assured now that the users’ behavior can be influenced and ‘tamed’ with polite reminders and gentle warning messages. In the long run, this can have a very positive effect on the overall user behavior on other online forums too.
Read next: How Affordable Is Internet Access Around The World? (infographic)
Gaining confidence from their success, Twitter is now expanding this warning system. Jane Manchun Wong, a reverse engineer, has recently reported that now, when a person will try to ‘Like’ a disputed tweet, Twitter will spring a warning at them to stop and first authenticate the claims mentioned in this tweet before liking it!
Although liking a tweet does not equate to retweeting and sharing, but whenever a tweet or article is Liked by someone, the ‘Liked’ tweet or article may probably appear in that person’s followers’ feed as a topic of mutual interest.
So, inadvertently, liking a disputed or labeled tweet may still cause you to become a source of spreading false information or misinformation. In a way, this is good if Twitter is asking people to look for authentic sources to confirm the information rather than just blindly and carelessly sharing whatever appears on the internet!
A while ago, Twitter also started urging its users through pop-up messages to read a tweet or article before sharing it with others. Most people are habitual of only reading the headline of a topic, and without ever opening it to see exactly what the topic is about, they post it for others to see the same stuff, which may have a lot of inaccuracies and misinforming content.
Twitter noticed that its efforts to make people read before posting or sharing articles also yielded some good results. Almost 40% of people started opening the articles before sharing them. Therefore, Twitter is quite assured now that the users’ behavior can be influenced and ‘tamed’ with polite reminders and gentle warning messages. In the long run, this can have a very positive effect on the overall user behavior on other online forums too.
Read next: How Affordable Is Internet Access Around The World? (infographic)
