Republican lawmakers are raising questions about Twitter’s new crowdsourced anti-disinformation feature called “Birdwatch”, which allows users to add notes to tweets they believe are fake in an attempt to “add context” to other users.
At Birdwatch, no accounts and no tweets are exempt from annotation, meaning users can “add context” to tweets posted by news outlets, reporters and elected officials.
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Birdwatch allows users to identify information in tweets that they believe to be misleading or false, and to write notes or notes to those tweets in a way that they feel is providing “informational context”.
Participants will be able to cite source material in their notes, including from news outlets – meaning users can annotate tweets from a news outlet by citing tweets from other news outlets.
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has been an important voice in the Senate on the issue of Big Tech and freedom of expression, criticized Twitter.
“Empowering ‘fact-checkers’ and left-wing billionaires in Silicon Valley to dictate what is ‘misleading’ only confirms what the American people already know is true: Big Tech is designating itself to be the sole arbiter of the truth and is using his power to silence dissent, “Cruz told Fox News.
Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Commented that Twitter users currently have the ability to verify others: “I thought that’s what people were already doing on Twitter.”
“I am totally in favor of freedom of speech and expression,” said Johnson. “I just wanted Twitter to go.”
House Oversight Committee member James Comer, R-Ky., Raised questions about whether Birdwatch could further silence conservatives and end up “stifling free speech”.
“Twitter has long been acting unilaterally to decide which content is and is not valid and factual,” Comer told Fox News. “Only time will tell whether Birdwatch will succeed in making a positive impact on a platform known to silence conservatives or whether this community-driven effort will eventually stifle free speech in the way that Twitter has done in the recent past.”
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After Twitter revealed Birdwatch on Monday, several House Republicans tweeted their initial reactions.
“Does anyone think Twitter will actually use this feature fairly?” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted.
“Collective censorship … what could go wrong?” Congressman Ken Buck, R-Co., Tweeted.
And Rep. Dan Bishop, RN.C. added: “Twitter turns libs into an army of censors. Feeling very 1984 …”
Twitter told Fox News that the company “is not checking the facts” with Birdwatch and said “it is not a true or false tool”, but rather a way of “adding context”.
“We know that people are looking to Twitter to stay informed and want reliable information to help them do so,” said Twitter vice president of product Keith Coleman. “We apply labels and add context to Tweets, but we don’t want to limit efforts to circumstances where something violates our rules or receives widespread public attention.”
Coleman said that Twitter wants to “broaden the range of voices that are part of the fight against this problem” and said the Big Tech giant believes that “a community-oriented approach can help”.
Birdwatch is only in its pilot phase as of Monday and only 1,000 users will be chosen to participate initially.
“We want to invite anyone to sign up and participate in this program and know that the broader and more diverse the group is, the better Birdwatch will be in dealing with disinformation effectively,” Coleman told Fox News.
To be admitted, the user must be located in the United States, have a verified email, a verified phone number in the U.S. and no violation of Twitter policies in the past year. Twitter told Fox News that if a user broke the rules or had their accounts suspended, that would be “disqualifying” to be considered for the pilot.
It is unclear when the new tools could become available to all Twitter users.
The company acknowledged that the pilot “can be confused and have problems at times”, but said he “believes that this is a model worth trying”.
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“We know that there are a number of challenges to building a community-driven system like this,” said Coleman, addressing the potential for the tool to be manipulated and the potential to be “dominated by a simple or biased majority based on its distribution. of taxpayers. “
“We want people to write for a different audience than they do on Twitter,” said Jonah Grant, software engineer on the Twitter team. “We want people to be useful, even to those who disagree.”
Coleman added that on the main Twitter, the user’s audience is his followers, who he said are typically “people who already agree with you”.
“Birdwatch is a different mindset,” said Coleman, adding that one user is “contributing to everyone”, including those “who may not have the same perspective”.
Meanwhile, Coleman said that Twitter conducted “more than 100 qualitative interviews” with individuals “from across the political spectrum who use Twitter” and said that they “received broad general support for Birdwatch”.
“People value notes for being in the voice of the community (rather than the voice of Twitter or a central authority) and appreciate that notes provide a useful context to help them better understand and evaluate a tweet (rather than focusing on in labeling the content as’ true ‘or false’), “said Coleman.
Twitter’s goal is to build Birdwatch “openly” and have it shaped by the Twitter community, but it also said it is taking “significant steps” to make Birdwatch “transparent” by making the data that contribute to Birdwatch publicly available and for download.
Birdwatch comes at a time when Twitter takes a more aggressive approach to disinformation on the platform.
Senior Director of Strategy and Public Policy Development at Twitter, Nick Pickles, said the company, for more than a year, has focused on public research and commentary that described what Twitter users were looking for in terms of misinformation.
“The main thing we heard was that they wanted Twitter to provide more context about misleading information and remove harmful information,” said Pickles.
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Twitter, in recent months, has taken steps to expand a number of its policies to monitor misleading information – specifically around the 2020 presidential election and coronavirus vaccines.
And earlier this month, Twitter permanently suspended former President Donald Trump from the platform after the company said it violated its policies. The action provoked the ire of some who claimed that the conservative speech was being censored by the technology giant.
Also earlier this month, Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts that were involved in sharing “harmful content not associated with QA”, which they say is dedicated to “spreading this conspiracy theory” across the platform.
Pickles explained that Twitter started to apply labels and remove certain misleading content in a way that made people “pause”.
“We recognize that these solutions do not solve,” said Pickles, pointing to the “challenges of fact verification”, but said that Birdwatch “reflects this approach”.
Pickles said there is a “desire” for people on Twitter to “move quickly” and provide more context for potentially misleading information.
“People want to be part of the conversation about which sources are trusted to give people more context,” said Pickles.
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“We are excited about this,” said Coleman, adding that the company does not want to “stop at the limits of where our policies are.”
“We want to give more people a voice in the process of deciding when to add context and decide what that context says,” said Coleman, stressing that there is more confidence behind a community-based approach “than when it is done by any natural person. technology institution or company. “