Twitter to Fight Fake and Manipulating Tweets

Twitter has geared up to fight against the circulation of synthetic and manipulating media on its platform. On Wednesday, Twitter announced a new policy where it will start labelling such content from March 5. Twitter assured people might not dishonestly share synthetic or manipulated media that may cause harm.

Twitter said in a statement, "Also, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand the media's authenticity and to provide additional context." From March 5, Twitter will apply a label to the Tweet that will warn people before they Retweet or like the Tweet; reduce the visibility of the Tweet on Twitter and/or prevent it from being recommended; and/or provide additional explanations or clarifications, as available, like a landing page with more context.

We will take all of the above actions in most cases on Tweets we label. Our teams will start labelling Tweets with this type of media on March 5, 2020,' said the company. "The Twitter Rules are a living document, meaning that our policies and enforcement approach evolve continuously to address emerging behaviours online," said Mahima Kaul, Director Public Policy, India and South Asia.

"To build the Synthetic and Manipulated Media policy, we solicited feedback from civil society organisations globally through a survey published in multiple languages including English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese," said Kaul. Twitter disclosed that this would be a challenge, and it will make errors along the way. "We appreciate the patience. However, we're committed to doing this right," it said. Before making a new policy, Twitter surveyed the initial draft of this rule and collected more than 6,500 responses from people worldwide.

Twitter also consulted with a diverse, global group of civil society and academic experts on the new rule. "Globally, more than 70 per cent of people who use Twitter said, taking no action' on misleading altered media would be unacceptable. Respondents were nearly unanimous in their support for Twitter providing additional information or context on Tweets that have this type of media," the findings showed.

Twitter will remove the content once it's clear that it is intended to cause certain types of harm. "More than 75 per cent of people believe accounts that share misleading altered media should face enforcement action. Enforcement actions could include people on Twitter having to delete their Tweet or having their account suspended,' the survey said.