Twitter's crowdsourced fact-checking expands to all US users

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Twitter has announced that Birdwatch, its crowdsourced fact-checking feature, is now available across the United States.

Birdwatch is a way for people to get a feel for the accuracy and reliability of content shared in a tweet and puts notes on tweets to help people make up their own mind. Now, all Twitter users in the United States can see those notes for the first time.

Twitter announced the move via a series of tweets, saying that it's been "building and studying Birdwatch in public for over a year." Over those tweets, it then explains how Birdwatch works. "Birdwatch works by using bridging-based ranking. Rather than majority rules, or popularity, Birdwatch shows notes that are found helpful by people who tend to disagree (in their Birdwatch ratings). This increases the odds that context added to Tweets is helpful to wide audiences."

Twitter also shared a blog post explaining more about Birdwatch, noting that "Birdwatch is made up of independent contributors, and individual notes are never written by Twitter, Inc. This is intentional, as it helps ensure our efforts to address potentially misleading information are informed by a diverse group of people who use our service."

There's still no telling when we can expect Birdwatch to expand yet further, but its arrival across the United States is a good start.

Twitter's explanation of how Birdwatch works is important because it uses its algorithm to try and find a consensus among people even across groups that would otherwise have different viewpoints. That means that Birdwatch is more than just the result of a vote, like a popularity contest. It should, in theory, also make it more difficult for people to game as a result.

As TechCrunch also notes, the timing of this expansion is interesting given the upcoming midterm elections and the ongoing Twitter buyout saga involving Elon Musk.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.