Twitter Expands ‘Birdwatch’ Trial

Twitter continues to seek to improve the accuracy of content on the platform, and will expanded its Birdwatch pilot.

In January 2021, Twitter began the Birdwatch pilot, which was only available to 10,000 Twitter users who registered for the scheme in the United States. It is essentially the Twitter equivalent of Wikipedia editors.

Birdwatch allows users to flag tweets that they believe are incorrect or misleading, and also write notes to provide context about the offending item.

Birdwatch expansion

Now after more than a year of making improvements to the scheme, Twitter in a blog post has revealed it is expanding its visibility, so it can make further improvements, based on feedback.

“Last year we launched the Birdwatch pilot — a new, collaborative way for people to add context to Tweets they believe are misleading, wrote Twitter VP Keith Coleman.

“We’ve made a slew of improvements to Birdwatch based on feedback from contributors, the public, and academic researchers, and we’re seeing promising results,” wrote Coleman.

He noted that in survey with randomly sampled people on Twitter in the US, the platform found that majority of people found Birdwatch notes (specifically those designated helpful by Birdwatch contributors) helpful – irrespective of their political persuasion.

He also noted people in the survey were 20-40 percent less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading Tweet after reading a note about it, compared to those who saw a Tweet without a note.

“These are encouraging signs that Birdwatch can be helpful and informative to people on Twitter,” wrote Coleman. “That’s why we’re now expanding the visibility of the pilot so we can make additional improvements with feedback from more people on Twitter.”

“Starting today, a small (and randomised) group of people on Twitter in the US will see Birdwatch notes directly on some Tweets,” he wrote. “They’ll also be able to rate notes, providing input that will help improve Birdwatch’s ability to add context that is helpful to people from different points of view.”

Misleading content

It should be remembered that Birdwatch is separate from Twitter’s other pilot reporting system that allows users to flag or report misleading tweets on the platform.

It was back in August 2021 when Twitter rolled out a limited test of a new reporting system for some people in the US, South Korea, and Australia.

Selected users in those countries were presented with the option to flag a Tweet as “It’s misleading” after clicking on ‘Report Tweet’.

The platform said earlier this year that since last August, it had received around 3 million reports from users who have used it to flag tweets which they believe are in violation of its policies.

But in January Twitter revealed that this pilot reporting option has been expanded to a number of other countries, including Brazil, Spain, or the Philippines.