Twitter launches Birdwatch, a fact-checking program intended to fight misinformation
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Twitter has launched its Birdwatch program, meant to address misinformation on the platform by allowing users to fact-check tweets, the company announced Monday. Users in the pilot program, which will only include about 1,000 users in the US to start, will eventually be able to add notes to tweets to provide context.
For now, users participating in the pilot can write notes on individual tweets, but the notes won’t be publicly visible on Twitter itself, only on the public Birdwatch website. Pilot users can also rate notes submitted by other participants in the program there.
Here’s an example of what a tweet with the Birdwatch notes would look like:
“We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable,” Twitter VP of product Keith Coleman wrote in a blog post. “Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.”
Twitter first confirmed it was working on Birdwatch last year, but it was not expected to release the program ahead of the US presidential election.
Today we’re introducing @Birdwatch, a community-driven approach to addressing misleading information. And we want your help. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/aYJILZ7iKB — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 25, 2021
Like most social media companies, Twitter has grappled with the spread of misinformation and propaganda across its platform. The company took steps to try to combat election misinformation during the US presidential campaign and after by labeling tweets with wrong or misleading information about the election. The program had mixed results, however, and did not appear to act as a deterrent to former President Trump, whose account was permanently suspended in January.
Twitter says it has interviewed more than 100 people across the political spectrum, who told the company that the Birdwatch notes provided useful context to better understand the tweets. “Our goal is to build Birdwatch in the open, and have it shaped by the Twitter community,” Coleman wrote.
All data contributed to Birdwatch will be available and downloadable in TSV files, and Twitter will publish the algorithms that power the program publicly in a Birdwatch Guide, the company said. The initial ranking system is available at Twitter’s GitHub page.
“We know there are a number of challenges toward building a community-driven system like this — from making it resistant to manipulation attempts to ensuring it isn’t dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors,” Coleman noted. “We’ll be focused on these things throughout the pilot.”
To sign up to participate in Birdwatch, users can apply here.
Twitter launches crowd-sourced fact-checking project
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Amazon launches Prime in Saudi Arabia
DUBAI: Amazon has launched its Prime service in Saudi Arabia with a free 30-day trial followed by a subscription fee of SR16 ($4) per month or SR140 per year.
The service allows Saudi Prime members to access shipping benefits such as free one-day delivery in all key metropolitan areas in Saudi Arabia, with the option of same-day delivery to Riyadh and Jeddah.
Subscribers will also receive free international delivery for items over SR200 from Amazon US and UAE, access to Prime Video and Prime Gaming.
“What is interesting about the Prime program, especially for small businesses and retailers in Saudi Arabia at this time, is the use of the infrastructure we have put in place in the Kingdom,” said Ronaldo Mouchawar, vice president of Amazon MENA. “This is a good opportunity for entrepreneurs, brand owners, sellers, retailers and big businesses to benefit from the technology as well as the logistic infrastructure that is available.”
Ronaldo Mouchawar, vice president of Amazon MENA. (Supplied)
The Prime service has over 150 million members globally and its video service in Saudi Arabia will include global titles with Arabic subtitles and dubbing options.
Not all of the platform’s content currently features Arabic subtitles and dubbing but Amazon is working on prioritizing shows that are popular among Saudi audiences.
As Amazon releases new global programs, the plan is to “include Arabic as a language in the thinking and release,” said Mouchawar.
In 2019, Amazon reportedly spent $6.5 billion on original content. It has not launched any originals in the MENA region yet.
“Making sure the content is compelling to the local population is important as we are now adding multiple countries in the region,” said Mouchawar, adding: “We’ll see what we can do with what’s available as we want to make sure that the shows are something our customers want to watch and are compelling and then we’ll move forward.”
Birdwatch: Twitter’s new fact-checking programme
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The social media platform’s new feature will allow users to identify information in tweets that they believe to be misleading.
In an attempt to combat the spread of misinformation online, Twitter has launched Birdwatch, a new feature that allows users to flag tweets that they believe contain false information.
The pilot of the new feature will be in the US and will use a “community-based approach” to address misleading information on Twitter.
Major tech players including Twitter have been testing features to help stop the spread of misinformation in recent years.
Tumblr reported and deleted a number of accounts in 2018 which were allegedly used by a Russian internet group to spread misinformation. In 2019, Pinterest stopped showing search results related to vaccines in an effort to curb misinformation, long before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.
Since Covid-19 spread across the world in 2020, misinformation and disinformation have spiked across virtually all platforms, leading to several Big Tech companies joining forces to combat the spread of false Covid-19 information.
In the run-up to the 2020 US election, Twitter started attaching warning labels onto posts with disputed or misleading information.
It also added warning labels informing users that there was disputed information in a tweet if they tried to like or retweet it. The company said that the introduction of these warning prompts saw the number of quote tweets of misleading information fall by 29pc.
How Birdwatch will work
Birdwatch is Twitter’s latest attempt at curbing the spread of false and dangerously misleading information on its platform. The company said that it will allow users to identify information in tweets that they believe is misleading and write notes that provide informative context.
In the early phases of the pilot, notes will only be visible on a separate Birdwatch site, where pilot participants can also rate the helpfulness of notes added by other users.
🐦 Today we’re introducing @Birdwatch, a community-driven approach to addressing misleading information. And we want your help. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/aYJILZ7iKB — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 25, 2021
“These notes are being intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, while we build Birdwatch and gain confidence that it produces context people find helpful and appropriate,” Twitter’s vice-president of product, Keith Coleman, said in a blog post.
“We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable. Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.”