Oliver Mitchell

Twitter’s Birdwatch Gets Expansion

Birdwatch, Twitter’s famous fact-checking program, receives a new expansion. It makes users concerned about the changes that might come in the program. The crowd-sourced tool is still on the experimental level in Twitter, made by the company to block all the misinformation that runs through the app.

The service is still fresh on Twitter. Early last year it was officially launched and quickly gained popularity among users. The program offered to bring the information users have found in tweets of other people to Twitter’s support team, highlight it, and claim it as misleading. To prove your point you have to include some facts or reasons why you believe the information is false.

There is no limit to the age or gender of contributors. Everyone can join the fact-checking system. All you need to do is to verify the phone number. You must not have violations of Twitter rules in your history, and you have to be Twitter’s page owner for at least 6 past months. There is a smart AI system that will match the contributors and participants of Birdwatch. The notes that were made by the most attentive users will be rated as helpful. They will be revealing to a wider audience.

Although this technique was created to help users to watch for fake content, it quickly gained wide opposition. Some users believe that the system dictates who is right and who is wrong, what to share on Twitter, and what is not appropriate for the social network. Those who decide which content to share are still people who may not simply agree with the topic, but since they are the vast majority of them, they can dictate rules. Now Twitter claims that there will be some improvements made in the system.

What do you think about Birdwatch? Have you noticed changes on Twitter? Explain your thoughts in the comments below.