Twitter launches more effective, redesigned misinformation warning labels
Twitter users
will soon see new warning labels on false and misleading tweets, redesigned to
make them more effective and less confusing.
The labels, which the company has been testing since July, are an
update from those Twitter used
for election misinformation before and after the 2020 presidential contest.
Those labels drew criticism for not doing enough to keep people from spreading
obvious falsehoods.
The redesign launching worldwide on Tuesday is an attempt to make
them more useful and easier to notice, among other things.
Experts say such labels, used by Facebook as well, can be helpful
to users. But they can also allow social media platforms to sidestep the more
difficult work of content moderation that is, deciding whether or not to remove
posts, photos and videos that spread conspiracies and falsehoods.
Twitter only
labels three types of misinformation: manipulated media, such as videos and
audio that have been deceptively altered in ways that could cause real-world
harm; election and voting-related misinformation and false or misleading tweets
related to COVID-19.
The new designs added orange and red to the labels so they stand
out more than the old version, which was blue and blended in with Twitter's
colour scheme. While this can help, Twitter said its tests showed that if a
label is too eye-catching, it leads to more people to retweet and reply to the
original tweet.
Twitter said Tuesday the redesigned labels showed a 17% increase
in click-through-rate," which means that more people clicked on the
redesigned labels to read the information debunking false or misleading tweets.
Misleading tweets that got the redesigned label with an orange
icon and the words stay informed" were also less likely to be retweeted or
liked than those with the original labels.
Tweets with more serious misinformation for instance, a tweet
claiming that vaccines cause autism will get a stronger label, with the word
misleading and a red exclamation point. It won't be possible to reply to, like
or retweet these messages.
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