Millions of people post daily on social media, and misinformation is a serious and recurring problem. In order to avoid misleading content and the spread of false information, Twitter is developing new warning labels to incorporate in tweets .
As published by the specialist Jane Manchun Wong, the purpose of this new tool is to provide context or destroy the statements made on Twitter . The labels in question would be three: 'Get the latest', 'Stay informed' and 'Misleading' (Misleading).
While there is not much information on how this new feature will work -or when it will be available-, the examples used are quite understandable.
Twitter would think of new tools against disinformation
Image: Jane Manchun Wong (Twitter) In a test tweet, Wong wrote: “I breathed in 60 grams of dihydrogen monoxide and I'm not feeling well.” Below the publication you can see the label 'Get the latest' linking to more information related to water , in order to avoid confusion about this substance and the use of its correct chemical name.
In the second example the specialist posted: “In 12 hours, darkness will rise in some parts of the world. Stay tuned.” The phrase caused the appearance of 'Stay informed', through which Twitter recommends learning more about the concept of time zones .
Finally he tweeted: “We eat. Turtles eat. Therefore, we are turtles.” Such a post triggers the harshest warning under the 'Misleading' tag, as it is a logical fallacy .
What is still not clear is if the labels for these three levels of warnings will always be activated automatically , through an algorithm, or if other Twitter users will be able to report the tweets as being confusing, misleading or fallacious. It is worth remembering that Birdwatch began operating in January, a community initiative to combat false news.
In addition, Twitter has already incorporated other tools to limit the viralization of misinformation. One is “read before retweeting”, which invites users not to share articles without first opening them to check their content. For now, we have to wait to see the new content tags in action, but they may be key to nip the promotion of unsupported content .
