Twitter is one of the first social media platforms that changed its algorithm to curb the spread of misinformation. The changes mainly included giving users warnings and blocking accounts that tweeted disputed information.
The most recent change also involves a warning message. Twitter users already get a warning when they retweet a tweet that holds potentially misleading information. Now, the users who even like a tweet that has been labeled as potentially misleading will get a warning message.
This news was recently announced by the platform in a Tweet.
According to Twitter, labeling tweets as misleading and prompting users who retweet the information has helped curb quoting flagged tweets by 29%. However, the method was not successful in reducing un-quoted Retweets.
Hence, the social media platform decided to add a new warning message in the hopes that it will restrict the number of likes on potentially dangerous tweets and news about sensitive topics such as the US presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Where Twitter users appreciate that the platform has partially stopped the spread of misleading information, many users are still yearning for features like an edit button, folders for categorizing bookmarked tweets and searching for a user’s tweets based on keywords.
