In a sense, you can think of Birdwatch as a moderation tool, but done by the general user base rather than a dedicated team of mods. The feature allows you to add notes to tweets that you think are sorely lacking in context. Of course, the note will identify the creator, as well as when it was created. It’s likely that Twitter made that visible so that the notes themselves don’t become a source of misinformation.
Moderators can flag tweets, vote on whether it is misleading, and add a note about it (I made up my own note to show what it currently looks like) pic.twitter.com/YIa6zt58Fj — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 5, 2020 Birdwatch was first discovered by code sleuth Jane Manchun Wong back in August. It surfaced again when it was tweeted by Matt Navarra. In actual implementation, the option will show up as a binoculars icon.
Looks like it allows you to attach notes to a tweet. May allow you to create public and private notes. pic.twitter.com/GNGEg2AmwT — Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) October 1, 2020 The social media company has yet to officially say anything about the Birdwatch feature, so a number of questions about it still remain. For one, will it be a feature that’s available to everyone, or only selected individuals that Twitter identifies as fact checkers? Will the author of a note require the permission of the tweet author before a note can be attached?
On Birdwatch, excited to share more about our plans here soon. — Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) October 3, 2020 Hopefully these questions get answered when the company makes an official announcement. According to company product lead, Kayvon Beykpour, that will be “soon”. (Souce: Jane Manchun Wong, Matt Navarra, Kayvon Beykpour )
