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 the previous Twitter used for election misinformation before and after the 2020 presidential campaign. Those labels have drawn criticism for not doing enough to stop people from spreading glaring falsehoods. .
Redesigned labels for potentially misleading Tweets are now rolling out to more of you.
In our testing, more people clicked on the new labels, and few people retweeted or liked potentially misleading Tweets with these labels. We will continue to improve our label design. https://t.co/MKYKtHJOFA pic.twitter.com/LimMdwbtuF
– Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 16, 2021
The redesign, which launched around the world on Tuesday, is an attempt to make them more useful and more noticeable, among other things.
Experts say such labels, used by Facebook as well as can be useful to users. But they can also allow social media platforms to bypass the harder job of moderating content – that is, deciding whether to remove posts, photos and videos that spread conspiracy and wrongdoing. .
Twitter only labeled three types of misinformation: “manipulated media,” such as video and audio that have been altered in a way that could be harmful in the real world; election and election-related misinformation and false or misleading posts regarding COVID-19.
The new designs have added orange and red to the labels so they stand out more than the old version, which was blue and blended with Twitter’s color scheme. While this can help, Twitter says its tests show that if a label is too eye-catching, it leads to more people retweeting and replying to the original tweet.
Twitter said on Tuesday the redesigned labels saw a 17% increase in “click-through rates,” meaning more people clicked on the redesigned labels to read information that weeded out false or misleading tweets. wrong.
Misleading tweets with redesigned labels – with an orange icon and the word “always be notified” – are also less likely to be retweeted or liked than tweets with the original label.
Tweets with more serious misinformation – for example, one claiming that vaccines cause autism – will be labeled more strongly, with the word “misleading” and a red exclamation mark. It is not possible to reply, like or reply to these messages.
