Twitter has launched a new initiative to deal with misinformation. How is this being done?

Twitter is enlisting its users to help combat misinformation on its service by flagging and noting misleading and false tweets.

The company said Birdwatch will not replace other labels and fact checks Twitter currently uses — primarily for election and COVID-19-related misinformation and misleading posts.

Twitter, along with other social media companies, has been grappling with how best to combat misinformation on its service.

The big tech giant is initially enlisting 1000 users in the US. These are people who have signed up with verified info and have not violated Twitter policies. These users will comment on individual posts to provide context where it’s needed.

Twitter said the objective of this pilot programme is to bring more voices to the table to provide context and deal with misinformation. Twitter believes this will be a better approach than allowing fact checking to be done in one central place.

If the pilot programme proves successful, it will be expanded to other parts of the world.