The pilot program unveiled Monday, called Birdwatch, allows a preselected group of users — for now, only in the U.S. — who sign up
through Twitter. Those who want to sign up must have a U.S.-based phone
carrier, verified email and phone number, and no recent Twitter rule
violations.
Twitter said it wants both experts and non-experts to write Birdwatch notes. It cited Wikipedia as a site that thrives with
non-expert contributions.
“In concept testing, we’ve seen non-experts write concise, helpful and easy-to-understand notes, often citing valuable expert sources,” the
company wrote in a blog post.Twitter, along with other social media
companies, has been grappling how best to combat misinformation on its
service. Despite tightened rules and enforcement, falsehoods about the
U.S. presidential election and the coronavirus continue to spread.
But if the effort is to work, Twitter will have to anticipate misuse and bad actors trying to game the system to their advantage.
To help weed out unhelpful or troll-created notes, for instance, Twitter plans to attach a “helpfulness score” to each one and will label
helpful ones “currently rated helpful.”
The company said Birdwatch will not replace other labels and fact checks Twitter currently uses — primarily for election and
COVID-19-related misinformation and misleading posts.San Francisco-based
Twitter said it is trying to ensure that Birdwatch has a diverse range
of perspectives and participants — an ongoing problem at Wikipedia,
where many of the contributors and editors are white men.
“If we have more applicants than pilot slots, we will randomly admit accounts, prioritizing accounts that tend to follow and engage with
different audiences and content than those of existing participants,”
Twitter wrote.
