Twitter to let some users in US, Australia, S. Korea flag 'misleading' content

SAN FRANCISCO • Twitter has announced a new feature to allow users to flag content that could contain misinformation, a scourge that has grown during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

"We're testing a feature for you to report tweets that seem misleading - as you see them," the social network said from its safety and security account.

Starting from Tuesday, a button would be visible to some users of the social media platform from the United States, South Korea and Australia to choose "it's misleading" after clicking "report tweet".

These users can then be more specific, flagging the misleading tweet as potentially containing misinformation about "health", "politics" and "other".

The San Francisco-based company said: "We're assessing if this is an effective approach so we're starting small."

It added: "We may not take action on and cannot respond to each report in the experiment, but your input will help us identify trends so that we can improve the speed and scale of our broader misinformation work."

Twitter, like Facebook and YouTube, regularly comes under fire from critics who say it does not do enough to fight the spread of misinformation.

But the platform does not have the resources of its Silicon Valley neighbours and it often relies on experimental techniques that are less expensive than recruiting armies of moderators.

Such efforts have been ramped up as Twitter toughened its misinformation rules amid the Covid-19 pandemic and during last year's US presidential election contested by Mr Donald Trump and Mr Joe Biden.

For example, Twitter in March began blocking users who have been warned five times about spreading false information about vaccines.

And the network began flagging tweets from Mr Trump with a banner warning of their misleading content during his 2020 re-election campaign, before he was finally banned from the platform for posting incitements to violence and messages discrediting the election results.

Moderators are ultimately responsible for determining which content actually violates Twitter's terms of use, but the network has said it hopes to eventually use a system that relies on both human and automated analysis to detect suspicious posts.

Concerns around Covid-19 vaccine misinformation have become so rampant that last month, President Biden said Facebook and other platforms were responsible for "killing" people in allowing false information around the vaccine shots to spread.

However, he later walked back the remarks, clarifying that the false information itself is what could harm or even kill those who believe it.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE