Twitter Launches ‘Birdwatch,’ a Forum to Combat Misinformation

Twitter unveiled a feature Monday meant to bolster its efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation by tapping users in a fashion similar to Wikipedia to flag potentially misleading tweets. The pilot program, called Birdwatch, is being tested in the United States, the social media firm said in a blogpost. It comes as calls to better combat misinformation on social media have grown substantially in recent years, particularly surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

The new system allows users to discuss and provide context to tweets they believe are misleading or false. The project, titled Birdwatch, is a standalone section of Twitter that will at first only be available to a small set of users, largely on a first-come, first-served basis. Priority will not be provided to high-profile people or traditional fact-checkers, but users will have to use an account tied to a real phone number and email address.

Twitter in the past year started adding labels and warnings about misinformation on the site, including about the Covid-19 pandemic and the US election. It permanently banned Donald Trump in the days leading up to the inauguration of his successor after the former president’s use of Twitter was seen to praise or enable the storming of the Capitol on 6 January.

Executives of the platform, along with those of other big tech firms, have been called to testify in front of Congress multiple times in the past year to answer for issues that include misinformation as well as the reach of big tech’s influence and power.

“Birdwatch allows people to identify information in Tweets they believe is misleading or false, and write notes that provide informative context,” Twitter Vice President of Product Keith Coleman wrote in a press release. “We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable.”

While Birdwatch will initially be cordoned off to a separate section of Twitter, the company said “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.” Demos of the product viewed by NBC News showed a separate area in which tweets are discussed and rated in a format that combines elements of both Reddit’s and Wikipedia’s moderation tools.

Birdwatch users are able to flag tweets from a dropdown menu directly within Twitter’s main interface, but discussion about a tweet’s veracity will remain exclusively in the Birdwatch section. Twitter says it does anticipate some users linking directly to Birdwatch discussions underneath high-profile and controversial tweets, just as some users would link out to fact-checking sites.

Participants in Birdwatch are able to rate others’ notes, as a mechanism to prevent bad-faith users from gaming the system and falsely labeling true tweets as false. Those ratings are then assembled into a Birdwatch profile separate of a Twitter profile, not unlike Reddit’s user-rating system. Twitter said it hopes to build a community of “Birdwatchers” that can eventually help moderate and label tweets in its main product, but will not be immediately labeling tweets with Birdwatch suggestions.

Twitter has faced increased pressure over the last year to address rampant misinformation on the platform. Aside from removal, it has relied on labeling, or adding context below tweets that spread misinformation. In March, facing a deluge of misinformation about the pandemic, it began removing “misleading and potentially harmful content” about Covid-19. By May, it had introduced labels to respond to tweets containing conspiracy theories about the origins of the disease and fake cures.

In February, Twitter rolled out a new “manipulated media” label, affixing it first to a tweet from then-President Donald Trump. In the months ahead, it would label many more for misinformation around the Covid-19 pandemic and the election. In just the final two weeks before the election, Twitter said it labeled some 300,000 tweets for “disputed and potentially misleading” content.

Twitter told NBC News it was encouraged by early trials of the program, which have been ongoing in the last year. NBC News first reported on a leaked demo of the program, which was then titled “Community Notes,” in last February. Twitter heavily focused on the threat of “manipulation” by what it calls “swarms” of bad actors, who may seek to use the platform as another weapon in online information wars.

“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. We’ll be focused on these things throughout the pilot,” Coleman wrote.

Researchers will also be able to download bulk data about Birdwatch entries, which he hopes will “enable experts, researchers, and the public to analyze or audit Birdwatch” and deter manipulation. “We know this might be messy and have problems at times, but we believe this is a model worth trying,” Coleman wrote

Twitter said it expects to have between 1,000 and 100,000 Birdwatchers who are being admitted on a rolling basis and who will not be paid. In the blogpost, the Twitter vice-president of product, Keith Coleman, said the notes will ultimately be visible to the global Twitter audience. “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,” said Coleman in the blogpost.

Pilot participants can rate the helpfulness of notes from other contributors. “We believe this is a model worth trying,” he said. Some have criticized Twitter for delegating the important task of moderating questionable content to unpaid users. But others say it could be a step in the right direction. Evan Greer, the director of online activist group Fight for the Future said the effectiveness of the program will depend largely on how, exactly, it is carried out.

“There is definitely a need for creative thinking when it comes to addressing disinformation beyond just ‘let’s censor more things’. And it makes sense to explore more decentralized models rather than giving more power to big tech companies,” she said. “That said, as always the devil is in the details. Twitter and other companies should consult with experts and members of impacted communities as they craft their policies and experiment with possible solutions to complex problems.”