The 2016 election was a watershed moment for the spread of misinformation online, so social networks have been exploring ideas to prevent the same from happening again in 2020. Twitter\u2019s latest test: labeling \u201charmfully misleading\u201d tweets by politicians.<\/p>\n
NBC News<\/em> first reported on the leaked test, which Twitter confirmed. With the new feature, misleading tweets would be labeled with a bright orange warning. Tweets from verified fact-checkers and journalists are then shown under the labeled tweet. It\u2019s also possible Twitter would include corrections from other users participating in a new crowdsourced \u201ccommunity reports\u201d feature akin to Wikipedia.<\/p>\n Twitter told NBC the mockup is one of many: \u201cWe\u2019re exploring a number of ways to address misinformation and provide more context for tweets on Twitter.\u201d \u201cMisinformation is a critical issue and we will be testing many different ways to address it.\u201d The company says the demo is one of several that may roll out in the weeks to come. Twitter also recently banned deepfakes in an effort to fight misinformation.<\/span><\/p>\n NBC News<\/em> reports that users could earn points and a \u201ccommunity badge\u201d for providing context for misleading tweets. Community members are asked to rate a tweet as \u201clikely\u201d or \u201cunlikely\u201d to be harmfully misleading. Twitter then asks them to rate what percentage of community members they believe would answer the same on a scale of 1 to 100. \u201cThe more points you earn, the more your vote counts,\u201d according to the demo.<\/p>\n In one example, Bernie Sanders claimed forty percent of guns in the US are sold without background checks. Beneath the orange \u201charmfully misleading\u201d label, you can see community members \u2013 denoted by a green shield next to their names \u2013 providing corrections and context. Specifically, that quote was based on a 1997 study, and modern studies show the correct figure to be 22 percent. There are further examples from other political figures.<\/p>\n While crowdsourced\u00a0information sources are subject to their own problems \u2013 nefarious Wikipedia edits come to mind \u2013 this seems like a step in the right direction for Twitter. While the platform is sometimes known for\u00a0rampant spread of misinformation \u2013 the US Commander in Chief \u2013 it also hosts a wide range of journalists and fact-checking organizations<\/span>\u00a0retaliating. A little more truth on the internet could go a long way.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/02\/200220-twitter-fact-checked-tweet-se-1310_d88fa3ccf6b0f2fb3473199a49600357.fit-760w-1.jpg\")
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