Twitter has started rolling out its new and improved misinformation warning labels, with the messages differing based on the misinformed content that they accompany.
Twitter’s misinformation labels were mostly (read: entirely) started with the intention of keeping users safe from the parade of factual fallacies that surrounded, you guessed it, the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID itself hasn’t fully left our sights, still sullenly being spotted in the side-view mirror, a lot of people will probably be content to forget just how many conspiracy theories surrounded the entire development of incidents. Stories about the vaccines giving you autism or magnetic powers, about how the virus was tied to Bill Gates and 5G towers, about how the entire world was conspiring each other by creating a virus to “control the population”, Lord knows what that means. At any rate, imbecilic as these may sound, tin-foil hat enthusiasts are the irritating combination of very vocal, very persistent, and very, very driven. As they label themselves martyrs for a crusade that literally no one’s making them fight, misinformation labels became a mainstay across virtually every known social media platform.
The warning labels back then were simple, had the same text line across the board, and kept themselves localized to COVID-19 related misinformation. However, Twitter is a platform that’s very fond of both experimenting as well as adding new features. So, how can one further develop what is already only a glorified warning sign at best? To make more of them, of course! And that’s what Twitter is doing, as the platform reveals more differentiated and elaborate labels aimed towards making itself both relevant and active.
The new warning labels were tested all the way back in July, and received a cautiously optimistic response. User click-through rates increased from 3% to 3.5%, which is pretty good for a social media platform. The platform, however, also saw a total decrease of 10% in post shares due to the new label redesign. Perhaps the initially high click rates were also an outlier, simply conducted by users that were curious to see what new thing they had encountered. At any rate, Twitter still seems happy with the overall result, and is going to go ahead with the new labels.
Labels will have different colors as well as attached messages, in order to quickly and efficiently convey to users why their content has a label attached to them.
Read next: Twitter news receive mixed results on its news provision and consumption outcomes
Twitter’s misinformation labels were mostly (read: entirely) started with the intention of keeping users safe from the parade of factual fallacies that surrounded, you guessed it, the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID itself hasn’t fully left our sights, still sullenly being spotted in the side-view mirror, a lot of people will probably be content to forget just how many conspiracy theories surrounded the entire development of incidents. Stories about the vaccines giving you autism or magnetic powers, about how the virus was tied to Bill Gates and 5G towers, about how the entire world was conspiring each other by creating a virus to “control the population”, Lord knows what that means. At any rate, imbecilic as these may sound, tin-foil hat enthusiasts are the irritating combination of very vocal, very persistent, and very, very driven. As they label themselves martyrs for a crusade that literally no one’s making them fight, misinformation labels became a mainstay across virtually every known social media platform.
The warning labels back then were simple, had the same text line across the board, and kept themselves localized to COVID-19 related misinformation. However, Twitter is a platform that’s very fond of both experimenting as well as adding new features. So, how can one further develop what is already only a glorified warning sign at best? To make more of them, of course! And that’s what Twitter is doing, as the platform reveals more differentiated and elaborate labels aimed towards making itself both relevant and active.
The new warning labels were tested all the way back in July, and received a cautiously optimistic response. User click-through rates increased from 3% to 3.5%, which is pretty good for a social media platform. The platform, however, also saw a total decrease of 10% in post shares due to the new label redesign. Perhaps the initially high click rates were also an outlier, simply conducted by users that were curious to see what new thing they had encountered. At any rate, Twitter still seems happy with the overall result, and is going to go ahead with the new labels.
Labels will have different colors as well as attached messages, in order to quickly and efficiently convey to users why their content has a label attached to them.
Read next: Twitter news receive mixed results on its news provision and consumption outcomes