Misinformation has been Twitter’s critical concern on its platform because of its real-time feature. To this problem, Twitter announced recent partnerships with Reuters and The Associated Press (AP) today. These partnerships aim to allay misinformation posted on the platform and focus on highlighting trustworthy news and information. Twitter’s Curation team will have leverage on expertise with the assistance of their new partners to enhance the context of news and trending topics posted across Twitter. These partners will also support Twitter to dominate in the use of public service announcements, track misinformation tags, and more.
Twitter announced recent partnerships with Reuters and The Associated Press (AP) today. These partnerships aim to allay misinformation posted on the platform and focus on highlighting trustworthy news and information. Twitter’s Curation team will have leverage on expertise with the assistance of their new partners to enhance the context of news and trending topics posted across Twitter. These partners will also support Twitter to dominate in the use of public service announcements, track misinformation tags, and more.
The team is currently working on adding more information users can explore about Top Trends and up-to-date news. They wanted to guarantee that when searching information on Twitter using hashtags or keywords, contents will be searched from reliable sources, shown at the top search results, and ranked accordingly.
The enhancement of Twitter’s platform may also include prompts about health emergencies like pandemic updates, elections, and other important events that concern the public. These types of notifications will appear on the Home Timeline’s Explore Tab. It may also help filter misinformation labels on published tweets that are labeled informative due to authoritative sources. These are tweets that do not conform to Twitter’s policy about COVID-19, election bias, and content that suggests media manipulation.
However, Twitter’s Trust and Safety team will continue to work independently to determine when posts are violating Twitter’s policy and distinguish whether they will be removed or banned. The enforcement of this policy will not involve either AP or Reuters, confirmed by Twitter.
The partnership with AP and Reuters will upscale and speed up Twitter’s ability to provide additional information on tweets not only on its platform but also elsewhere. It means that where there is recent news posted and facts disagree, Twitter’s team can navigate quickly to access trusted sources and improve information added to conversations happening on their platform. The process of correcting facts before it becomes viral can be helpful to avoid misinformation and ambiguous tweets.
Twitter’s high-profile users who misrepresent the truth adds to its misinformation problem. Several platform functions are tested to mitigate or stop misinformation from going viral – disabling one-click retweets, adding fact-checks, banning users, and others. Birdwatch is Twitter’s latest innovation to counter this problem.
Misinformation has been Twitter’s critical concern on its platform because of its real-time feature, and high-profile users who misrepresent the truth adds to its misinformation problem. Several platform functions are tested to mitigate or stop misinformation from going viral – disabling one-click retweets, adding fact-checks, banning users, and others. Birdwatch is Twitter’s latest innovation to counter this problem.
Birdwatch fact-checking system will also help manage feedback from Reuters and AP to regulate the quality of information posted by its contributors.
The Curation team will keep working with the news companies to add informative context to conversations and stories. They will also help identify those that need more context. The additional context will be visible in various places on Twitter which can be in search, Explore, tweets, or Twitter Moments.
“AP has a long history of working closely with Twitter, along with other platforms, to expand the reach of factual journalism. This work is core to our mission. We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts,”” Tom Januszewski, Vice President of Global Business Development at AP, remarked in line with the partnership.
Hazel Baker, Head of UGC Newsgathering at Reuters added, “Trust, accuracy, and impartiality are at the heart of what Reuters does every day, providing billions of people with the information they need to make smart decisions. Those values also drive our commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation. We’re excited to partner with Twitter to leverage our deep global and local expertise to serve the public conversation with reliable information,”
This collaboration’s primary focus is on English language posts on Twitter. However, it is expected to grow over time to cater to other languages and time zones. Twitter will continue to explore opportunities to welcome collaborators who can support more languages.