You may have seen people talking about @Twitter adding labels to @realDonaldTrump’s tweets, like this one this morning. But wait wait wait. What is this about?
This is a new thing. Check out this thread from @TwitterSafety, the official Twitter Public Safety Account explains why they thought it was in the public interest to flag Trump’s tweet this morning.
Backstory: check out this announcement from @Twitter Twitter on May 11. They said they were planning to put to new labels on tweets that might be confusing or misleading related to #covid19. Now it seems they’re expanding this strategy to other topics. blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/p…
@Twitter also slapped a label on some tweets from a few days ago from @realDonaldTrump that said “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” see below. Check it out and click on that link.
There is a lot of controversy around this new strategy from Twitter. You can read more here from @FoxNews:
foxnews.com/politics/twitt…
and check this one out too from @nytimes:
nytimes.com/2020/05/28/tec…
Should you trust this new feed curated by Twitter that attempts to provide context to tweets like this? It’s not clear yet how Twitter is curating this new event/moment feed. So you still need to fact-check on your own…
twitter.com/i/events/12653…
You can start by using these three questions from the Stanford History Education Group to do that:
1. Who is behind the information?
2. What is the evidence?
3. What are other sources saying?
1) Who is behind the information? Look for bias, possible motives, and if they are experts on the subject matter. Remember, if they have a blue checkmark that does NOT mean they are an expert on the subject, check out their Twitter bio. Google them!
2) What is the evidence? Are they providing evidence? What is their reasoning? Are there any links to more info? Show me the proof!
3) What are other sources saying? Use trusted, reliable sources to look into the tweet before you trust the info and take it as fact. We like to look at least 2-3 other familiar sources, AT LEAST!
It’s a good first step that @Twitter is putting labels on possibly misleading info. However, they’re not being transparent about how they’re coming to those decisions, so still be double checking that the info is accurate before you share anything.
poynter.org/fact-checking/…
Where this is all going with Twitter is still unclear. MediaWise program manager, @KABGreek, weighed in on how she thinks @Twitter should handle this going forward. Take a look! poynter.org/fact-checking/…
You’re going to be seeing a lot more of these labels, so stay vigilant and don’t just trust that something is fake or misleading because it was labeled so by Twitter. Finally, if you see anything you’re not sure about -- send it to us! Use #isthislegit and we’ll check it out.
Have you seen these labels? What do you think of them? We’d love to know, and share links and screenshots please!
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