Twitter to Work With News Organizations to Dispel Misinformation

 

Twitter reports it will work with Reuters and the Associated Press, two of the world’s largest news organisations, to dispel misinformation on its social media platform. The news organisations will assist Twitter in providing greater context and background information on events that result in many tweets.

The social Media platform expects that this will help prevent the spread of false info so that its users can continue to enjoy hours of fun using the platform. There has been renewed pressure on the platform to delete bogus content.

When “facts are in dispute,” Twitter claimed the agreement would allow it to ensure that accurate and reputable information is quickly available. “Rather than waiting for something to go viral, Twitter will contextualize developing conversations in real time or ahead of time,” according to Twitter employees.

When significant or rapidly developing conversations occur that are noteworthy or contentious, Twitter’s Curation team identifies and promotes relevant context from credible sources to counter potentially erroneous material shared by users.

The team may also be engaged with the prompts that show in the Explore tab on the Home Timeline for important events such as public health emergencies (such as the pandemic) or other events such as elections. They may also assist with the misinformation labels that appear on tweets that are allowed to remain public on Twitter but reliable sources have labelled them as unreliable.

Twitter’s fact checking

Birdwatch, Twitter’s new crowdsourced fact-checking system, will also use feedback from the Associated Press and Reuters to assist and decide the quality of material posted by Birdwatch users. According to Twitter, the Curation team will work with news organisations to add context to articles and conversations and assist and identify which stories require context.

This additional context might show on Twitter in various places, including tweets, search, Explore, and curated selections known as Twitter Moments.

Thanks to social media, we no longer communicate how we used to. Even the terminology we use has been influenced by old and new social media platforms. The social media platform current ubiquity in pop culture and everyday dialogue is a beautiful example of this. After all, the Oxford English Dictionary added the definition of “tweet” in 2013.

Twitter currently has a very different function than it had a few years ago. Twitter was created in 2006 as a way for friends and acquaintances to post daily status updates. However, Twitter has evolved into a PR-driven news channel, with news headlines and items prominently displayed in everyone’s feed.

Twitter has become so popular that 71% of us use it to read the news. This means that not only are individuals using Twitter to consume this type of information but PR professionals and journalists are also using it to promote their material and careers.

Struggling to grow

Social media moves quickly, and all platforms have altered and grown to keep up with the times. Twitter is a very popular social media site, and it has undergone several changes. From pitch to launch, Twitter, which Jack Dorsey initially founded as an SMS mobile phone-based platform, took only a few weeks.

Over the previous 11 years, the social media platform has undergone significant modifications to its operations, including launching a mobile app in 2010 and the introduction of promoted tweets in the same year. Despite these changes, Twitter has struggled to grow, losing users over time, and usage peaked at 300 million tweets per day at the beginning of 2016.

This need for expansion, coupled with the fact that Twitter has yet to turn a profit, has prompted numerous significant adjustments in the last 18 months. One of the most drastic changes was removing @usernames, photos, and links from the Twitter character limit. Other recent updates include the reorganization of Tweets on your timeline, the addition of polls, and the conversion of stars to hearts.

Twitter is frequently chastised for failing to keep up with other social media platforms that have innovated and grown more quickly. On the other hand, Twitter has been pushing forward in some respects, particularly with their acquisitions of Vine and Periscope.

Vine was the only genuine alternative to YouTube when they bought it, and Periscope was one of the first live services. They didn’t manage to integrate them quickly enough, though. Other platforms recognized their success and integrated them first, realizing that users preferred to stay in their preferred platform if at all possible. As a result, it took the platorm a long time to make the necessary improvements.

Who knows what the future holds for Twitter, with constant social media changes. We hope it sticks around for the long haul!