Twitter Expands ‘Birdwatch’: Users Can Now Rate Crowdsourced Notes On Tweets

In 2020, Twitter announced it was working on a new feature to fight misinformation on the platform, aptly named ‘Birdwatch’.

Now, following a pilot program that started over a year ago, the social media site will be expanding the tool, which crowdsources fact checking, to more users stateside.

According to AP News, ‘Birdwatch’ allows for regular users to flag and correct misleading tweets on the app, though it functions separately to Twitter’s news verification partnerships with news sources. 

It appears anyone with a verified mobile number and no recent Twitter violations can participate as a fact-checker. 

The site asks contributors to build understanding, act in good faith and be helpful, even to users with whom they inherently disagree. 

As per Social Media Today, the feature doesn’t silence or limit a tweet’s reach or performance, but provide “more context to those who seek it.” 

Beginning this week, users who see annotations on certain tweets will be asked to rate if the corrections were helpful. 

Notes will only be seen on tweets after it’s been deemed helpful by users of “different perspectives,” which Twitter said it determines by how accounts have rated other notes in the past.

Additionally, to help contributors feel more comfortable, Twitter said it will auto-generate aliases for those participating in the pilot program.

Will Twitter’s ambitious crowdsourcing tool work as planned? Only time will tell.

🐦 Today we’re introducing @Birdwatch, a community-driven approach to addressing misleading information. And we want your help. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/aYJILZ7iKB

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 25, 2021

We’ve been hard at work building a Birdwatch that people from different points of view find helpful. We’re seeing promising results, and starting today, a test group of people in the US will see the highest rated Birdwatch notes on Tweets. https://t.co/7fIJJmOfcl

— Birdwatch (@birdwatch) March 3, 2022

[via AP News, Twitter, and Social Media Today, cover image via Twitter]