For the first time, Twitter will collaborate with two of the world’s largest international news organizations, Reuters and the Associated Press, to fact-check misinformation spread on the social media platform.
According to the news agencies, Twitter will be able to provide more context and background information on events that generate a large number of tweets.
Twitter stated in a blogpost that the new program would “increase the scale and speed” of this work by increasing their “capacity to add reliable context to conversations occurring on the social media platform.”
When Twitter’s Curation team “doesn’t have the specific expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting on Twitter,” the post stated that material from Reuters and the Associated Press would improve information credibility on the platform.
With this, the social media platform hopes to prevent the spread of false information.
Twitter stated that the collaboration will allow it to ensure that accurate and credible information is made available as quickly as possible “when facts are in question.”
In a statement, Twitter stated that “rather than waiting until something goes viral, Twitter will contextualize developing discourse at the same pace as or in anticipation of the public conversation.”
Twitter’s Curation team currently searches for and promotes relevant context from reputable sources in order to counter potentially misleading information posted by users when large or rapidly growing conversations occur on the social media platform. These conversations may be noteworthy or controversial in nature.
The trust, accuracy, and impartiality, according to Hazel Baker, Reuters’ head of user-generated content newsgathering, are at the “heart of what Reuters does every day,” and they “drive” the company’s “commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation.”
The Associated Press’ vice president of global business development, Tom Januszewski, said in a statement that the news organization had a “long history of working closely with Twitter, as well as other platforms, to expand the reach of factual journalism.”
According to a Twitter spokesperson, this is the first time the social media platform has formally collaborated with news organizations in order to promote accurate information on its platform.
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