Twitter’s battle with misinformation has been ferocious in the past few months and especially during the US elections. The company rolled out new labels for misleading content and started to show a warning when users try to retweet such disputed tweets. Now the social network is adding yet another weapon in its arsenal – a new alert will pop-up when people try to like a post that is labeled as misleading.
Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital.
These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29% so we’re expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet. pic.twitter.com/WTK164nMfZ
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 23, 2020
Twitter announced the change via its official Support profile, stating that the aim is to reduce the spread of misinformation about sensitive topics like the COVID-19 situation for example. The official post shows how the pop-up warning works – users will see a large exclamation mark with a text saying “This is disputed”. A “Find out more” button will link to an explanation of what Twitter calls “credible information”.
According to the social network, the warnings showing when people try to quote misleading tweets helped decrease the spread of false information by 29% so the company is hoping to expand on this with the new alert. The update is rolling out for iOS and the web, while Android users will have to wait a couple more days.
