Twitter expands Birdwatch community fact-checking program with new onboarding process, more

Twitter announced Wednesday that it is bringing several new additions to its Birdwatch community fact-checking program that was launched last year. The Birdwatch program includes users who add notes to help identify potentially misleading tweets and provide context with additional information. The social media platform has now revealed that it is starting a new onboarding process for the programme. In addition, Twitter will increase the visibility of the notes to increase Birdwatch’s positive impact on the community.

Twitter has revealed blog post On Wednesday it’s launching a new onboarding process that aims to encourage contributors to write and rate notes thoughtfully.

New members will start with an Impact Score of zero, which will be increased by initially rating other notes as Helpful or Not Helpful. After raising their Impact Score to five, users will be able to write notes themselves. However, repeatedly writing Not Helpful notes will lock the contributor from writing notes.

With the rollout of a new onboarding process, Twitter aims to expand its contributor base as well. It plans to repeatedly accept larger groups of eligible applicants for the Birdwatch program and monitor the impact of a larger base.

Twitter will also increase the visibility of notes on public Tweets in the coming weeks. People in the US will see more tweets that Birdwatch identifies as helpful.