Twitter's Crowdsourced 'Birdwatch' Fact Checking Rolls Out to US Feeds

pcmag.com:

In a bid to combat misinformation, Twitter last year rolled out Birdwatch, which allows people to write a note on a misleading or factually wrong tweet that explains why the content is off base. After testing the function for over a year, those notes will now be visible to users in the US.

Users can apply online(Opens in a new window) to become part of the Birdwatch team; once approved, Birdwatchers can propose notes that add context to a tweet. The wider community then rates those notes.

"Decisions aren't made by majority rules or popularity, so one group alone can't determine what notes get shown," Twitter says. "Instead, Birdwatch finds notes that are helpful to people with different points of view."

The platform uses a bridging algorithm, which accounts for the number of contributors rating a note as Helpful or Not Helpful, as well as whether those people provide different perspectives on the subject. The top note (often with clickable links) is added to the offending tweet for additional context. An onboarding process, meanwhile, requires new contributors to consistently rate others' contributions and reliably identify those notes that are helpful or not.

"We've been building and studying Birdwatch in public for over a year," Twitter says in a blog post(Opens in a new window). "There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of a participatory process (Boaty McBoatface) and there are a lot of reasons to believe in it (democracy)."

On average, people are up to 40% less likely to agree with a post accompanied by an explanatory note than those who see the tweet on its own, acccording to Twitter, which also found that someone who sees a note is up to 35% less likely to like or retweet that post.

The fact-checking