Twitter Expands Birdwatch Feature In Many Countries To Check Hoax Content

Birdwatch feature that asks Twitter users to identify misleading tweets. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA - Twitter Inc., on Thursday, March 3, announced that it will continue to expand its crowdsourced fact-checking program. They are also actively taking notes about potentially misleading tweets and being seen by more people on Twitter.

The social networking site launched a project called Birdwatch last year as a new experiment that asks Twitter users to identify misleading tweets and write notes to provide information that debunks the content, which will then be added to the original tweet.

Like other social media platforms, Twitter has long been under pressure to do more to prevent fake content from spreading among its 217 million daily users.

Records written by 10,000 contributors to the Birdwatch pilot program have been kept on a separate website.

"Now, a small group of random users on Twitter in the United States will be able to see Birdwatch notes directly in tweets and be able to assess the usefulness of the information," Twitter said on its blog, also cited by Reuters.

Over time, Twitter says that it aims to expand Birdwatch to expanded users in more countries.

Several Birdwatch notes on Thursday discussed misleading content related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week.

A tweet on February 26, which has been retweeted more than 17,000 times, shows a picture of senior British singer Paul McCartney waving the Ukrainian flag while on stage in front of a crowd.

A note added to a tweet on the Birdwatch website said the photo was taken in 2008 when McCartney was performing at the "Independence Concert" in Kiev.

Twitter said that in a survey, people were 20% to 40% less likely to agree with potentially misleading tweet content after reading Birdwatch notes about it, than those who viewed content without it. `