Twitter looks for ways to warn its readers if political tweets are considered factually inaccurate. The social networking company finds the addition of big, orange warnings to false news items “harmfully misleading.”
Information of Twitter’s plans for incorporating warning messages were leaked to NBC News, and the company acknowledged this could happen.
We’re exploring a number of ways to address misinformation and provide more context for tweets on Twitter,” a company spokesperson told NBC News. “Misinformation is a critical issue and we will be testing many different ways to address it.”
The proposed system would add that “Harmfully Misleading” note to tweets with false information. And this would be followed with the message “Twitter Community reports have identified this tweet as violating the Community Policy on Harmfully Misleading Information. This tweets visibility will be reduced.”
After this could come posts from experts refuting the fake news statements in the original tweet with real facts.
Reportedly, only tweets from public figures would undergo this fact-checking process. And their tweets would be verified by journalists, though Twitter is considering creating a community of users to mark public statements as untrue.
This social-networking site says it plans to roll out new tools to combat fake news on March 5. This is happening as the US presidential election is heating up.
Apple is already doing what it can to combat fake news . Last year, it started an initiative that encourages critical thinking and empowers students to be better informed.
