Twitter is looking for ways to notify its readers when posts by politicians are judged to be factually untrue. The social-networking service is considering attaching large, orange “harmfully misleading” warnings to posts that are fake news.
NBC News was leaked details on Twitter’s plans to add warning messages, and the company confirmed that this is something that might happen.
“We’re exploring a number of ways to address misinformation and provide more context for tweets on Twitter,” a company spokesperson told NBC News. “Misinformation is a critical issue and we will be testing many different ways to address it.”
Labeling “Harmfully Misleading” fake news on Twitter
The proposed system would add that “Harmfully Misleading” note to tweets with false information. And this would be followed with the message “Twitter Community reports have identified this tweet as violating the Community Policy on Harmfully Misleading Information. This tweets visibility will be reduced.”
After this could come posts from experts refuting the fake news statements in the original tweet with real facts.
Reportedly, only tweets from public figures would undergo this fact-checking process. And their tweets would be verified by journalists, though Twitter is considering creating a community of users to mark public statements as untrue.
This social-networking site says it plans to roll out new tools to combat fake news on March 5. This is happening as the US presidential election is heating up.
Apple is already doing what it can to combat fake news . Last year, it started an initiative that encourages critical thinking and empowers students to be better informed.