Check your facts: Twitter takes tougher approach
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In addition to disputing misleading claims by US President Donald Trump about mail-in ballots this week, Twitter has added fact-checking labels to thousands of other tweets since introducing the alerts this month, mostly on posts about the coronavirus.
The company does not expect to need additional staff for the undertaking, Twitter spokeswoman Liz Kelley said on Saturday, nor is it partnering with independent factchecking organizations, as Facebook and Google have, to outsource the debunking of viral posts flagged by users.
Fact-checking groups said they welcomed Twitter鈥檚 new approach, which adds a 鈥済et the facts鈥 tag linking to more information, but said they hoped the company would more clearly lay out its methodology and reasoning.
On Friday, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey acknowledged the criticism, saying he agreed fact-checking 鈥渟hould be open source and thus verifiable by everyone.鈥 In a separate tweet, Dorsey said more transparency from the company was 鈥渃ritical.鈥
The company鈥檚 move to label Trump鈥檚 claims about mail-in ballots separates it from larger competitors such as Facebook, which declares its neutrality by leaving factcheck decisions to third-party partners and exempts politicians鈥 posts from review.
鈥淭o a degree, factchecking is subjective. It鈥檚 subjective in what you pick to check, and it鈥檚 subjective in how you rate something,鈥 said Aaron Sharockman, executive director of US factchecking site PolitiFact.
Twitter telegraphed in May that its new policy of adding factchecking labels to disputed or misleading coronavirus information would be expanded to other topics.
It said this week 鈥 after tagging Trump鈥檚 tweets 鈥 that it was now labeling misleading content related to election integrity.
Twitter鈥檚 Kelley said the team is continuing to expand the effort to include other topics, prioritizing claims that could cause people immediate harm.
A Twitter spokesman said the company鈥檚 Trust and Safety division is tasked with the 鈥渓eg-work鈥 on such labels, but declined to give the team鈥檚 size.
This week, Twitter defended one of these employees after he was blasted as politically biased by Trump and his supporters over 2017 tweets.
Twitter also drew Trump鈥檚 ire for putting a warning over his tweet about protests in Minnesota over the police killing of a black man for 鈥済lorifying violence,鈥 an enactment of a 2019 policy that was long-awaited by the site鈥檚 critics.
In the tweet, Trump warned the mostly African-American protesters that 鈥渨hen the looting starts, the shooting starts,鈥 a phrase used during the civil rights era to justify police violence against demonstrators.
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