Recently, Twitter had launched tags to ban and signify manipulated media in tweets, and now Twitter is considering new labels for identified misinformation. This new label will include large tags on “harmfully misleading” reports and will include links to reference material to cross-check the information, according to Social Media Today.
“In this version, disinformation or misleading information posted by public figures would be corrected directly beneath a tweet by fact-checkers and journalists who are verified on the platform and possibly by other users who would participate in a new ‘community reports’ feature, which the demo claims is ‘like Wikipedia’,” NBC News explained.
This new feature is just one of the possible variations of the tag that Twitter is testing and maybe none of them will ever make it thought to live roll-out, according to Social Media Today. However, the way Twitter is seeking to address the spread of misinformation has becomes a key focus in the debate regarding the use of social media for political campaigning.
This tag would most likely help reduce the amount of retweets of misinformation, specifically on Twitter; research has suggested that it is more about bots than it is about fake information. As there are armies of bot accounts being used to amplify and send out a certain message in order to make it seem more credible and important that it actually is, according to Social Media Today.
Twitter has also introduced plans in order to address this aspect of bot networks with a new checkmark on the user’s profile that will highlight identified bot accounts. However, there has been no further movement on this mark to profiles so far.
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