Since people have a lot of time on their hands the past few months, the proliferation of misleading information on the internet has never been more dangerous. Social networks are some of the culprits in spreading these conspiracy theories, fake news, and all kinds of non-factual information. Twitter has been adding several changes the past few months to help stop the spread of these posts and to help users determine which is true and which may be potentially misleading. The latest thing they’re adding is to give warnings to those tweets you may have liked that have already received a misinformation label.
In case you liked one of those tweets that have already been flagged by Twitter as misleading, you’ll now get a warning as well. It seems to be similar to the warning that shows up when you’re trying to Quote Tweet something that has been labeled as well. The notification says “This is disputed” and encourages you to help keep the platform a source of reliable info. There’s a “Find out more” button that you’re supposed to click before deciding whether or not to like or share.
Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital.
These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29% so we're expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet. pic.twitter.com/WTK164nMfZ
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 23, 2020
Of course, this will not really prevent a user from still believing and sharing the tweet or article but it can give people a pause or mental block between truth and possibly misleading information. This is a continuous battle against “synthetic and manipulated media rules” that are basically destroying the supposed free and open discourse on platforms like Twitter. But of course they need to make people understand why a tweet has been labeled so.
Twitter has been introducing tools to take action against misleading information as well as helping users protect themselves from such things. The aforementioned prompt before retweeting was part of this campaign as well as a prompt that encourages you to read the article first before retweeting. They said that these prompts have decreased the Quote Tweets for labeled misinformation by 29%.
These new prompt warnings should show up wherever you use Twitter. This includes desktop and mobile as well as both Android and iOS platforms.
