Early last year, Twitter launched an initiative called Birdwatch. It’s a bit like Wikipedia but for combating misinformation. Driven by the community, the program has gone from being a pilot program to something larger.
Now, it’s about to grow even more. Twitter announced via a blog post that the program is looking to onboard even more contributors keen to make their slice of the platform a better place. For them, obviously.
Birdwatch: The Gathering
The way Birdwatch works is that participants identify tweets that they believe contain misinformation. These identifications and notes are visible to other ‘Watchers. If enough of them, from enough different backgrounds, agree with the assessment, the note becomes visible to regular users. It’s like disclaimers for tweets but powered by… democracy? Sure, that works.
New Birdwatch contributors who want in on this action can join up, but they’ve got a process ahead of them. Newcomers start with an initial rating of zero, but active participation and rating others’ notes can bump that number up. Once they have a rating of five, they’re able to post notes of their own. Enough Helpful ratings on those will boost their visibility. Garnering enough Not Helpful ratings, on the other hand, will lock a vetted user’s ability to post notes. Temporarily.
The system is designed to avoid having large numbers of trolls running around posting notes on otherwise harmless tweets. How well it’ll work in the face of concerted malice (or concerted misplaced idealism) isn’t certain. Twitter’s done a few studies, though.
Having an effect?
The social media platform has conducted three surveys. The results indicate that “…people who see a Birdwatch note are, on average, 20-40% less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading Tweet than someone who sees the Tweet alone”.
Additionally, those who see notes are up to 35% less likely to Like or Retweet a potentially misleading tweet. That applies across political boundaries, which are important in America. Twitter said that “notes were found to be informative regardless of a person’s self-identified political party affiliation”.
Keen to join your local Birdwatchers? You can sign up here.