Twitter working on new warning labels to tackle fake news
Twitter working on new warning labels to tackle fake news
Twitter is reportedly working on three new warning labels designed to address misinformation on the platform, as per a new leak that has emerged on the microblogging platform.
According to a screenshot shared by researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter is currently working on three warning labels, namely "Get the latest", "Stay informed," and "Misleading". The labels, which appear to have been created for specific types of misinformation.
Wong is popular on Twitter to reverse engineering a wide range of applications and services such as Messenger, Facebook and Twitter, to advance future features, such as Twitter emoji reactions to tweets. On Tuesday, she tweeted three sample tweets showing the new tags on the microblogging service.
"Snorted 60 grams (sic) of dihydrogen monoxide, and I'm not feeling so well now," the first tweet reads, which triggers the "Get the latest" label to show more information about H2O or water.
The second tweet read, "In 12 hours, darkness will ascend in parts of the world. Stay tuned," triggering the "Stay informed" label, which also offers information about the concept of timezones.
Wong also tweeted, "We eat. Turtles eat. Therefore we are turtles," which triggered Twitter's last new label – "Misleading". Users are offered details about logical fallacies, which they can access by tapping the "Find out more" link under the label.
The researcher's findings appear to have found validation from Twitter employee Yoel Roth, who retweeted Wong's screenshots, adding that these are some of the "first experiments" with new design treatments for the company's misinformation labels. He also asked for user comments and opinions in the tweet.
It's unclear when Twitter will release these new misinformation tags on the platform or if they'll even come out of testing. However, marking these tweets with specific reasons and suggestions to understand the context better suggests that the process may not be automated and that responses are generated based on the tweet; We'll know more once Twitter officially announces the feature, so stay tuned.