The microblogging site first introduced Community Notes in 2021 to debunk fake news on the platform.
Twitter has announced the roll-out of the Community Notes feature, previously known as Birdwatch, to its users across the globe. The feature is Twitter’s attempt to fact-check misleading Tweets by letting users add context to the microblogs.
Before its global rollout, the Community Notes feature was visible only to users in the United States. “Beginning today, Community Notes are visible around the world,” the American multinational tech giant announced on December 11.
“Community Notes aim to create a better informed world by empowering people on Twitter to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading Tweets,” the microblogging platform wrote in its Help Center. “Contributors can leave notes on any Tweet and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a Tweet.”
To become a contributor, users will have to sign up to write and rate notes. Eligible account holders must not receive any recent notice of Twitter rules violations, have joined the platform at least six months ago, and possess a verified phone number.
The microblogging site first introduced Community Notes in 2021 to debunk fake news on the platform. It was then called Birdwatch and let users add context to the Tweets. Amid mass layoffs at Twitter, weakening content moderation policies and a surge in fake accounts, the global roll-out of a fact-checking system seems very much necessary. The company’s new boss Elon Musk also sees Community Notes as “a gamechanger for improving accuracy on Twitter.”
Elsewhere, the company yesterday relaunched the Twitter Blue subscription with new pricing. The new subscription will cost $8 per month if users subscribe on the web and $11 if they access the subscribe-only features on iOS. The company has yet not confirmed how much Twitter Blue will cost on Android. The relaunch is expected to be more systematic than its October launch where several Blue subscribers with verification mark changed their user names to impersonate officials and big companies.
