Twitter is looking for ways to let users flag fake news

Twitter is exploring adding a feature that would let users flag tweets that contain misleading, false, or harmful information, according to twopeople familiar with the company’s thinking.

The feature, which is still in a prototype phase and may never be released, is part of the company’s uphill battle against rampant abuse on its platform. It could look like a tiny tab appearing in a dropdown menu alongside tweets, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the effort.

Twitter has been plagued by everything such as fake accounts that can be purchased outright for pennies and spread automated messages and false stories. Extremists use the service as a recruiting tool and hate-spewing trolls have threatened women and minorities.

These long-standing problems gained new urgency in the aftermath of the presidential election, when critics and researchers pointed to the toxic effect of social media on the public debate.

Twitter spokeswoman Emily Horne said the company had “no current plans to launch” the feature but said she would not comment on whether it was being tested. “There are no current plans to launch any type of product along these lines,” she said.

But Horne insisted that the company has beenaddressing the problem. Earlier this month, Twitter said that it was expanding personnel, adding resources, and building new tools, but shared very fewdetails about the effort.

Twitter is “working hard to detect spammy behaviors,” Vice President of Policy Colin Crowell said in a blog post earlier this month. Such behaviors include automated accounts that retweet the same message over and over or all at once in a concerted effort to manipulate trending topics, he noted. “We’ve been doubling down on our efforts,” Crowell said.

Another aspect of Twitter’s developingefforts includes a focus on machine learning, a method in which software attempts to detect micro-signals from accounts to determine whether they are fake.

Given the sheer scale of social media, curtailing this type of abuse is a formidable challenge even for wealthy tech companies. Twitter has more than 300 million monthly users and Facebook announced earlier this week that reached 2 billion users. There is also a fine line between abuse and free speech,

“We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth,” Crowell wrote earlier this month, and emphasized that Twitter users “journalists, experts, and engaged citizens” tweet side by side to correct public discourse every day in real time.