Twitter working to let users flag fake news
“Twitter is working hard to detect spammy behaviours. We’ve been doubling down on our efforts. – Colin Crowell, Twitter Vice President of Policy
TWITTER is exploring adding a feature that would let users flag tweets that contain misleading, false or harmful information, according to two people familiar with the company’s projects.
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 drop-down 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.
Two-thirds of American adults say fabricated news stories that spread on social media have caused a “great deal of confusion” about basic facts and public events, according to a December poll from Pew Research Centre. One estimate from the service Twitter Audit found that 59 per cent of President Trump’s followers are bots or fake accounts, while Hillary Clinton’s are 66 per cent bots. (Twitter does not comment on third-party estimates.)
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.
Horne pointed to a company blog post from earlier this month which said that Twitter was adding personnel and resources, and building new tools, but shared few details about the effort.
Twitter is “working hard to detect spammy behaviours,” 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 announced.
Facebook is also crowd sourcing the fake-news fight. In March, the company rolled out a tool that lets users flag content they think might be false by clicking a tab to dispute it.
If enough people click“dispute ,” the story is sent to independent fact checkers that Facebook has partnered with.
Google has also asked the public to help spot pages that are misleading or offensive. Another aspect of Twitter’s developing efforts includes a focus on machine learning, a method in which software attempts to detect micro-signals from accounts to determine whether they are fake. For example, if an account tweeting political messages in English consistently comes from an IP address in Russia, whose government has tried to influence US elections, the company might take notice.
The company could also look at whether certain accounts are frequently retweeted by people associated with credible or verified accounts, such as reporters at mainstream news organisations, or whether a news site has previously been associated with false information.
“We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth,” Crowell wrote earlier this month. He emphasised that Twitter users — “journalists, experts, and engaged citizens” — tweet side by side to correct public discourse every day in real time.