Twitter announced a strategy to bring reliable information to users

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Social networks have become one of the preferred means of information throughout the world. Although they can be great tools in that sense, the reality is that they are also great propagators of fake news that, when it comes to issues like Covid-19, can put users at risk. Due to this, in recent years there has been more talk about the responsibility that platforms have over what is published. That is why Twitter announced a new strategy to bring reliable and contextual information.

The microblogging network has announced that it has partnered with The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters to help its curatorial team bring reliable information to its users. This way your employees will have more tools to work on contextualizing some of the most popular.

It's worth remembering that Twitter's curation team oversees some of the platform's most visible and sometimes controversial topics, including those highlighted in the Trends and Explore tab.

Beyond obtaining more reliable data, according to Twitter, thanks to their agreement, users can expect the platform to operate faster as it will be easier for them to be able to ensure that there is more and better contextual information to see as people discuss issues in the service.

Twitter also hopes the partnership will help some features, where context is critical, work better. In this case, the company refers to tools such as Birdwatch.

The changes and the reason for this association

As a starting point for the deal announced with the media, Twitter announced that Trends will include contextual descriptions and links to reports from reputable publications more frequently.

In addition, the social network announced that the program will help people proactively identify topics that could become a source of misinformation. Instead of waiting until something goes viral, Twitter will contextualize the development of the speech to the rhythm of the public conversation or in anticipation of it, the company said.

Precisely the above is one of the reasons why the company is promoting the association. By trying to better support its curatorial team, Twitter wants to prevent a repeat of a situation like the one encountered last year after the death of Jeffrey Epstein when the social network was invaded by conspiracy theories about Epstein's suicide. , and the company apparently couldn't stop hashtags like #ClintonBodyCount from trending. It should be said that said hashtag referred to a theory that states that former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary have been behind several murders, in this case, that of Epstein.

And, even when posts and links that are clearly intended to misinform are removed, Twitter trends are often an easy tool for the spread of fake news and other negative practices such as trolling, as shown when the American gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics.

But according to Twitter, while trolls are likely to continue trying to fool the service, enlisting the help of The Associated Press and Reuters could make those efforts less visible.

Finally, it should be noted that initially, AP and Reuters will focus on helping the company with content in English, the Twitter curator team also contextualizes the content in Japanese, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese.