Since the beginning of the year, Twitter has operated a pilot program called Birdwatch who has seen crowdsource fact check directly from other Twitter users. Now introducing ways for program participants to hide their identity when they add notes to someone’s tweet. Starting today, the company said it would automatically produce aka for new Birdwatch users who were not related to their Twitter account.
“We want everyone to feel comfortable contributing to birdwatch birds, and alias let you write and rate notes without sharing your Twitter username,” said the company in a blog post. The hope is that the feature will reduce the bias by emphasizing what people write in the notes they left behind their identity. Citing the latest research, it is said that alias can also make people feel comfortable with “across partisan lines, or criticize their own side without the prospect of peer pressure or retribution.”
Next to alias, Twitter also launched a profile page that would make it easy to see someone’s birdwatch contribution in the past. The company said it was doing this to make sure the alias did not come “at the expense of accountability.” For this reason, every note on a public profile someone will cover the current rankings that can be obtained by contributions, telling you what the community thinks about it. Hopefully it is something that helps with the reliability problem that teases the program.
For those who join Birdwatch before the announcement today, all their previous contributions will now fall under their new aliases. Because some people might be able to conclude the connection between someone’s head bird profile and Twitter username based on the fact that the examination they saw before the launch of the feature today, the company said the program participants could DM Birdwatch account about removing their past contributions.
