Twitter tries to make it easier to report content related to fake news. The social network announced on Tuesday that it was testing a new tool that allows its users to report publications potentially relating to disinformation, a scourge that exploded during the pandemic.
“We are testing a feature to allow you to report tweets that seem misleading, the moment you see them, ”the social network said via its dedicated security account. A handful of users in the US, South Korea, and Australia can now select the ‘this is misleading’ option after clicking ‘report tweet’. They will then have the choice between several categories, including “health”, “political” and “other”.
Identify trends In a first The goal is to start small to see if this approach is working, the San Francisco-based company said. “We will not react and cannot respond to every report during this experiment, but your contributions will help us identify trends in order to improve the speed and reach of our work on disinformation.”
Twitter, like Facebook and YouTube, is regularly criticized for not tackling disinformation enough. But the platform does not have the same resources as its neighbors in Silicon Valley, and therefore explores techniques that are less expensive than recruiting armies of moderators.
Over the years, and especially during the pandemic and the American electoral campaign, during which Twitter banned political advertisements , the social network has toughened its rules. As of March, for example, users can be banned after five reminders about vaccine misinformation. A system inspired by the one put in place regarding the elections, which notably led Twitter to ban Donald Trump for repeated offenses such as incitement to violence and its messages discrediting the presidential election.
A system that is both human and automated Moderators are already responsible for determining which content violates the regulations, but the platform has always indicated that it hopes to develop a system that is both human and automated to detect problematic messages.
The issue of disinformation around the Covid – 19 and vaccines have grown to such proportions that in July US President Joe Biden even estimated that Facebook and other platforms were “killing” people by letting them circulate false information about vaccination against Covid. He went back to his remarks to specify that false information disseminated by users could “harm those who listen to them” and “kill people”.
With AFP
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