Twitter pilot to let users flag 'false' content

[inanna]

Source: BBC

5 hours ago

Twitter is asking its users for help in combating fake news.

It has announced a pilot that allows people to submit notes on tweets that may be false or misleading.

The initiative, named 'Birdwatch', is being trialled among a small group in the US initially. The firm acknowledged the new system would have to be "resistant to manipulation attempts".

Companies like Twitter are looking at how they can better moderate their platforms.

Twitter said on Monday: "We know this might be messy and have problems at times, but we believe this is a model worth trying."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55806002

[canuckledragger]

1. Oh great.

Another system for pouty right-wingers to game, like they do Facebook's comment reporting system, where they mass report someone they don't like to get them banned/suspended.

[NewJeffCT]

2. Yes - that is what will happen

organized mass reporting by the right wingers.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. I love Twitter, but

Twitter has high quality populations with intelligent content, but it's getting so even the elites are using it to vent drama about their personal lives instead of their expertise. "My refridgerator went out? What do I buy?" is not very relevant.

Birdwatch will be plagued by political considerations. They need to limit the ability to flag as well as moderate. Gee, that sounds like DU! Did the owners copyright the moderating system?

[gab13by13]

4. This will be a clusterfuck,

This reminds me of what we did in Iraq. We paid people to turn in the bad guys, how did that work out?

[mwooldri]

5. I suggest Twitter adopts DU jury system.

Or something like it. Sure the DU jury system isn't perfect by any means but it seems to work here. What's worse is doing nothing.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Problem with that

is twitter appears to be completely infested with armies of bot accounts with single individuals (or troll farms) controlling them (although they go through and purge them every once in awhile and that seems to make the news). But they would still make it ripe for gaming juries. I think there were estimates that upwards of 1/2 of 45's supposed "followers" were bots.

I have no twitter account and am not sure how they work the account signups but maybe they need to deploy some kind of anti-bot feature to thwart (or at least slow) the creation of bot accounts (and for logins) - even if they use something like that damn Captcha thing.