The US midterms are approaching, and Twitter is working to combat any potential misuse of its platform to spread misinformation about the candidates, with a series of improved election integrity featuresas well as new, curated election information centers to help increase reliable updates.
First, Twitter by activating the implementation of its Civic Integrity Policy, giving it more capacity to limit the spread of fraudulent tweets.
Above I tweet:
“The Civic Integrity Policy covers the most common types of harmful misleading information about elections and civic events, such as: claims about how to participate in a civic process such as how to vote, misleading content intended to intimidate or persuade people from participating in elections, and misleading claims intended to undermine public confidence in elections – including false information about the outcome of the election. Tweets with this content may be tagged with links to reliable information or useful context, and Twitter will not recommend or amplify this content in product areas where Twitter makes recommendations.”
Twitter launched a new set of tweet tags last November, which include additional notes about why the tweet was tagged.
These additional tags have proven to be effective in limiting the spread of misinformation, with Twitter reporting that the updated tag formats increased ‘Find out more’ click-through rates by 17% (meaning more people were clicking tags to read unblocked content), while they also led to markedly lower engagement with tagged Tweets.
Twitter is also bringing it back ‘precranial‘ to further limit the spread of misleading reports.
Prebunks are intended to provide context on potentially misleading election trends, while limiting false reporting of the same.
“Over the next few months, we’ll be placing requests directly on people’s timelines in the US and in Search when people type in related terms, phrases or hashtags.
Twitter also launches new election news hubs in Explore, with updates curated by the Twitter team, along with its tags on candidates’ profiles to make it clear who they are and what position they’re running for.
Twitter will also promote media literacy tips @TwitterSafetyto help users educate themselves on ways to avoid misinformation.
The combination of initiatives should help limit the spread of misinformation about polls and keep Twitter users informed. This is important because while Twitter’s audience is only small compared to other social apps, Twitter is home to real-time news and updates, meaning that most news stories that are first shared on Twitter are then aggregated to other platforms as a result.
Many of the most passionate and active news followers stay up-to-date through tweets, and if Twitter can ensure that these people don’t get incorrect information in the first place, it could actually have a huge impact on the wider ecosystem. of news.
That is why all these elements are more important than, on the surface, they may seem.
