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January 27, 2021 2:52 PM
Experts caution that a new tool allowing Twitter users to moderate content may be counterproductive and ripe for abuse.
Following on the heels of its ban of Donald Trump, Twitter this week unveiled Birdwatch, which lets any user add notes with helpful context to any tweet they see as misleading.
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Will Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, warned, however, that when the topic being fact checked is already contentious, crowd-based moderation could just replicate the conflict you re trying to resolve. Duffield said brigading, where groups of Twitter users gang up on others, could manipulate Birdwatch results.
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Republican lawmakers are raising questions about Twitter s new crowdsourced anti-misinformation feature called Birdwatch, which allows users to add notes to tweets they believe are false in an attempt to add context for other users.
On Birdwatch, no account and no tweet is exempt from annotation, meaning users can add context to tweets posted by news outlets, reporters and elected officials.
Birdwatch allows users to identify information in tweets that they believe are misleading or false, and write notes or notations to those tweets in a way they feel is providing informative context.