Twitter made the announcement on Saturday that the global rollout of Community Notes has begun. The feature, formerly known as Birdwatch, debuted for the first time in 2021 as a means for the social media website to combat misinformation.
When it comes to dispelling erroneous tweets, Community Notes employs a crowdsourcing strategy. The program’s moderators can add notes to tweets to provide “context.” After that, regular users can vote on whether or not the context is “helpful.” Prior to today, only Americans could view the notes. Twitter claims that it will soon begin recruiting contributors from other regions.
Elon Musk, the current owner of the company, has made the claim that the feature will be “a gamechanger for improving accuracy on Twitter.” He has positioned Community Notes as an essential component of his vision for “Twitter 2.0.” Community Notes, like any other crowd-sourced feature, has the potential to backfire if groups use it to promote partisan views.
The global rollout of Community Notes occurs one day before Twitter Blue’s relaunch. Twitter announced on Saturday that it would relaunch its revamped subscription service on Monday after a disastrous first attempt at paid account verification. Before receiving a blue checkmark on their account this time, subscribers will be required to provide a phone number for verification purposes. In addition, while Twitter reviews their account, users who alter their handle, display name, or profile picture will temporarily lose their blue checkmark.
