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Twitter gets mixed media tweets; Birdwatch notes are now public in USA

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Twitter’s community moderation program, Birdwatch is now expanding to all US users starting October 6. At the same time, the micro-blogging site has announced that users can now share multiple forms of media including images, videos and GIFs together in a single tweet. 

Users can add up to four videos, images and/or GIFs to each tweet. The update, however, is only available on the Android and iOS apps. That said tweets with multiple content types can be viewed on all platforms. 

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Crowdsourcing the fight against misinformation

Announced last year, Birdwatch sums up the platform’s attempts to limit misinformation on the site by allowing a small group of users to add notes to tweets that may be misleading or spreading misinformation. These notes are then voted as helpful and appear as context for the general public. Most notes will also contain additional sources that can be referenced for more information on the particular subject or conversation.

The program is completely run by independent contributors and Twitter won’t write individual notes. It’s also designed to bring up notes that have been voted as informative or helpful by as many people as possible because of a bridging algorithm.

While the feature has expanded to all users in the United States, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all users will be able to add notes or rank other contributions. The expansion merely shows the notes on potentially misleading tweets. 

Users will have to sign up to become contributors, with the platform looking for users who follow and interact with content that’s different than existing Birdwatch moderators so as to have a diversly opined pool of contributors among other factors. As of last month, the site had over 15,000 contributors, however, Twitter claims that the number is growing. 

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Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah is a Computer Science graduate who writes/edits/shoots/codes all things cybersecurity, gaming, and tech hardware. When he's not, he streams himself racing virtual cars. He's been writing and reporting on tech and cybersecurity with websites like Candid.Technology and MakeUseOf since 2018. You can contact him here: yadullahabidi@pm.me.

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