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Five requirements to be a “citizen moderator” on Twitter

The misinformation and fake news controversy surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the US presidential elections – including the blockade of Donald Trump – have marked a turbulent last year on Twitter.

However, the micro-messaging social network believes it has the solution to these drawbacks: turning its users into fact-checkers. To do this, it launched the Birdwatch program.

The initiative will allow users to write notes in individual tweets, which will initially only be visible to those who participate in Birdwatch. However, the idea is that later all users can see them.

“Over time, our goal is to make notes directly visible in Tweets to Twitter’s global audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors,” explained Twitter Vice President of Product Keith Coleman.

In its pilot phase, the initiative will only be available to about 1,000 users in the United States, but the company assured that the goal is to expand Birdwatch to the entire world.

“We want everyone to be able to participate and know that the more diverse the community, the better Birdwatch will be at effectively addressing misinformation. We will build on the learnings from this initial trial and eventually scale safely, ”added Twitter.

Requirements

???? Today we’re introducing @Birdwatch, a community-driven approach to addressing misleading information. And we want your help. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/aYJILZ7iKB

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 25, 2021

The company enabled a application form, in which five requirements are established to be able to participate in the pilot phase:

  • Verified phone and email: the idea is that real people participate, rather than bots or adversarial actors.
  • US telephone operator: to avoid the use of virtual phone numbers. It is assumed that when BirdWatch reaches other countries, local operators will be accepted.
  • Two Factor Authentication Enabled: to reduce the possibility of malicious attempts to hijack participants’ accounts.
  • Not having recently been notified of Twitter rule violations: to reduce the likelihood of abusive contributions.

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