Twitter announced on Monday that it has unveiled a new monitoring system, “Birdwatch,” where users can report and flag another user’s tweets under the new system.
Users identified as “Birdwatchers,” can flag tweets they say contain misinformation.
“We believe this approach has the potential to when misleading information spreads, adding context to that people trust and find valuable,” Twitter Vice President of Product, Keith Coleman said Monday. In Twitter’s announcement, it said that it will be available for 1,000 users to start, and they hope to expand the pilot program as users gain more experience with it.
Users operate the new program by clicking on dots on the top right section of a user’s tweet, and a list of options appear including one now that says, “contribute to birdwatch,” from there, the user can snitch on the “offending,” user, and they’re able to include notes for the tweet. Twitter says that the notes won’t affect the status of
“So basically, a group of ideologically aligned people can get on here and take down anything they don’t agree with,” Ryan Ashe tweeted.
In a statement to Fox News, Twitter said that the new program wasn’t intended to be a fact-checking tool, but instead a way of “adding context to posts.”
“We want to write for a different audience than they do on Twitter,” Jonah Grant, a Twitter staff software employee said.
“We want people to be helpful, even for those who disagree.”
