Twitter to introduce a misleading report option – In The News

ByCraig Haley

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and during the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has been largely criticized for allowing false information to proliferate across their platforms.

And while Facebook has been testing a variety of tools to help curb that misinformation, Twitter – with the exception of some high-profile bans – has been largely quiet.

But now the microblogging social media site is testing a new tool that can allow users to label a tweet “misleading”.

According to the Twitter Safety account, some people in South Korea, Australia and the United States will see a new option when reporting a tweet that will allow them to identify it as “misleading”.

Previously there was no option to report false or misleading tweets, with users having to opt for less accurate report options such as “abusive” or “spam”.


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But why has it taken so long to add (or rather, test) a misleading option?

It may seem like a no-brainer to add a “misleading” option on a platform with a problem with misleading and fake tweets spreading, but it’s not that simple.

In an ideal world only misleading or false tweets, such as the erroneous claims that COVID-19 is a hoax or vaccines contain secret tracking chips, would be reported as such. These reports can then get flagged to human moderators who can remove or hide the content.

But life isn’t that simple. The reality is that opening up a “misleading” option will lead to an avalanche of reports that are erroneous in themselves. For example, those who believe in conspiracy theories are likely to report accurate information as misleading. And in countries that are currently politically polarised, such as the United States, many will use this reporting option to report political content they simply disagree with.


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And then of course there are the blurred lines as to what constitutes misleading in the context of social media. Atheists may be inclined to report tweets purporting the existence of God as misleading. Capitalists may report a tweet promoting the benefits to communism as misleading, and vice versa.

The end result; an epic volume of reports that encumber the abilities of human moderators who are simply overwhelmed.

That seems to be the inevitable result, but if Twitter could find a way to use a combination of artificial intelligence and human moderation to separate the erroneous reports and the legitimate ones, such a reporting option could be an effective method to help curb the misinformation that gets spewed across the site daily.

If the limited rollout in the three aforementioned countries is successful, expect a Report option coming to your Twitter account soon.

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