Recent improvements to Twitter Birdwatch

Now that Elon Musk is taking over Twitter, we all know that we are in for surprises more often than before. There are already multiple speculations about several new changes expected based on Elon’s tweets. The last two years have been very entertaining on Twitter with an array of new features announced and a few of them are live now.

Most of them will go through revisions after the new owner and his ideas. We look forward to bringing you all the recent developments on Twitter. Keep following Tweetfull to learn more about marketing in Twitter.

In this blog, we bring you all the recent improvements on Twitter Birdwatch. When Twitter launched ‘Birdwatch’ last year, the feature was well-received as this is an important step to combat fake news. Of course, within a few days, it was evident that Birdwatch needed improvements in a few areas to be a successful feature. 

Twitter listened to all the commentaries and now Birdwatch is in a better place. Here are the notable improvements in Twitter birdwatch to the earlier version (Click here to know how Birdwatch works),

Auto-generated Aliases Instead Of Contributor Name

Contributors are the key to Twitter Birdwatch. Twitter has insisted multiple times about protecting the interest of the contributors. In that pursuit, the Birdwatch feature will now use an auto-generated alias name with the note dropped by a Contributor instead of using his/ her real user name.

In the pilot version now, all the Contributor notes will carry an alias name instead of their real names. We have to wait and see if this will be carried to the live version or if the choice will be with the contributor.

For now, in the pilot version, though the alias name is auto-generated, the user will have a choice of an alias name to pick for him/ her.

Bringing ‘Diversity Of Perspectives’ Into Ratings

In our last blog on the ‘Introduction to Twitter Birdwatch’, we discussed how Twitter uses ‘Helpful scores’ to rank a note and display it to the users. Now, Twitter has improved the algorithm for ‘Helpful scores’ further. 

Twitter will now not only consider the number of ratings a note receives, but also take into account the diversity of the owners of the ratings to build better credibility to the note.

For instance, if there is a note about the ‘Advantages of going vegan’, Twitter will value the rating of an ardent vegan supporter and a general audience’s rating differently. If both rated the note as 3 stars, each of their rating will have a different weight in evaluating the note.

Twitter has also clarified clearly that the diversity of rating will not value ratings based on demographic, gender, or political affiliation and it will be purely based on a user’s profile activity evaluation.

A New ‘Needs Your Help’ Tab

Twitter has added a ‘Needs Your Help’ tab to the pilot version recently. If you have used ‘Quora’, then you will be aware of a similar tab there and you know how it works.

Essentially, ‘Needs Your Help’ tab on Twitter will have a set of tweets where your feedback will be more valuable. Twitter will monitor the nature of the topics you contribute and will bring questions of the same nature into the ‘Needs Your Help’ tab. 

There are two advantages to this. One, when you see a notification in this tab, there are more chances for you to contribute than you naturally contribute to a tweet in your timeline. Second, quality contributions will increase as more people who are aware of the topic in discussion will be answering.

Encouraging Mentioning Sources And Explanations

Contributors will be encouraged to cite sources supporting their added note on any tweet. Mentioning authentic sources will make life very easy for someone with lesser knowledge of the tweet’s information to have a clear idea if he intends to. 

This will not be a requirement for any note added or reviewed by a contributor. Instead, Twitter will send notifications and have labels mentioning how a source or a clear explanation adds value to the note.

Twitter is looking further to improve these areas by collaborating with some popular press and media agencies. Options to prompt a contributor with possible accurate sources for his note are also being discussed. This prompt feature is not a part of the pilot versions yet. 

Conclusion

The above-mentioned features are the major improvements in Twitter Birdwatch. There are also a few other minor upgrades happening in the feature. Twitter is trying to devise a feature that will make the Contributor understand the value of his/ her contribution.

With the pilot version in very good shape, we can expect the feature to go live in a month or two. Twitter has already started to extend the number of Contributors to Birdwatch. 

Will Twitter Birdwatch reduce fake news on Twitter and make Twitter a better place? Tell us what you feel!