The Russian occupation that started last week in Ukraine continues with all its violence. Twitter, on the other hand, stepped up to prevent the spread of false and suspicious information, which increased with the Ukraine-Russia war. The social media platform took the first step in the USA for the Birdwatch feature it launched earlier. Accordingly, the Twitter misinformation prevention feature is now available to a limited audience. But what is Twitter Birdwatch and how will it fight misinformation?
Twitter is starting a fight for suspicious and misinformation with its Birdwatch feature
The social media platform started testing the feature on 10 thousand users for the first time in August. As you know, the internet is not only a large pool of information, but also the place where misinformation spreads the fastest. For the past two years, Facebook has been working with fact check organizations around the world to fight misinformation.
Twitter is in pursuit of effectively combating suspicious and false information with the Birdwatch feature
Although Twitter continues to keep in touch with these organizations, it has taken a different path with the Birdwatch feature. Accordingly, the platform established a citation writing group from different professional groups such as academics and scientists to prepare Birdwatch notes. In this sense, a Birdwatch note containing quotes and brief information about the subject appears under the posts containing suspicious and incorrect information.
Although the Birdwatch note contains expert opinion, Twitter requires these notes to be viewed as informative by different opinion groups to combat suspicious news and posts. Accordingly, the first screening for Birdwatch notes was made between groups of different opinions who prepared the notes. Twitter, which opened the prominent notes to some users in the USA, announced that the notes chosen by those who contributed to Birdwatch were much more useful.
Twitter, in a statement on its official blog, revealed that the posts containing suspicious and false information presented with the Birdwatch note have become between 20 and 40 percent less effective. In this sense, with the Twitter Birdwatch feature, it is planned that users will be more protected against false information.
With the Russia-Ukraine war, many social media platforms, including Twitter, were bombarded with bilateral misinformation. In this sense, the number of shares containing Birdwatch increased from 50 to 150 per day. It is said that the feature that Twitter brought to the agenda after the increasing information pollution in the pandemic accelerated it even more after this crisis.
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