As of October 6th, Twitter’s Birdwatch community moderation program has been expanded to all US users.
It’s a big step for Birdwatch, which was officially launched in beta in January 2021, and marks a step up for the platform’s efforts to reduce the spread of misinformation on the platform. But as the scheme expands, data reviewed by The Verge suggests that the most common topics being fact-checked are already covered by Twitter’s misinformation policies, raising new questions as to the overall impact of the program.
At its core, the promise of Birdwatch is to “decentralize” the process of fact-checking misinformation, putting power into the hands of the community of users rather than a tech company. But fact-checking encompasses a huge range of topics, from trivial and easily debunked rumors to complex claims that may hinge on fundamental uncertainties in the scientific process.
In public statements, Twitter executives involved in the program have focused on the easier decisions. In a call with reporters last month, Keith Coleman, vice president of product at Twitter, suggested that the strength of Birdwatch was in addressing statements that were not covered by Twitter’s misinformation policies or weren’t serious enough to be assigned in-house fact-checking resources. “It can speak to the internet’s random curiosities that pop up,” Gizmodo quotes Coleman as saying. “Like, is there a giant void in space? Or, is this bat actually the size of a human?”
We downloaded...
Vadodara/Surat. A special CBI court has convicted four individuals in a 23-year-old fire insurance fraud case in Gujarat and sentenced each of them to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The cou...