Earlier this year, Twitter began testing a new feature that could flag tweets with misleading or potentially harmful information. Before the 2020 US elections, users received a warning when they intended to retweet a tweet that they considered potentially misleading. Now, the social media company has announced plans to display a similar warning when users try to like a tagged tweet.
According to Twitter, the addition of prompts when retweeting labeled tweets reduced the number of tweets cited with misleading information by 29% during the election.
Twitter now hopes that showing a warning to users before they like such tweets may further reduce misinformation on the platform. You will soon see a warning with the “Find out more” button if you try to hit the “Like” button on a post marked as misleading.
Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital.
These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29% so we’re expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet. pic.twitter.com/WTK164nMfZ
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 23, 2020
Twitter announced earlier this month that it had classified around 300,000 tweets as controversial and potentially misleading between October 27 and November 11. Of the 300,000 reported tweets, users were unable to like or retweet 456.
According to The Verge, the new feature will be available to Twitter users from around the world on the web and iOS platforms from this week. It will also be available in Android devices in the coming weeks.
