Twitter is going to discourage users from liking tweets that have been flagged for misinformation

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Twitter is filled with misinformation and straight-up lies and recently, it has been working on that. While the company has been focused on labeling misleading posts and discouraging users from retweeting them, going forward, Twitter will actually actively discourage users from even liking tweets that have been labeled.

With the election being what it is and Twitter being a major catalyst in the spread of misinformation (from the president, no less), it makes sense to try and limit the spread of these false claims. The company notes that discouraging retweets has “helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29%.” Twitter hopes that discouraging likes will produce similar results.

Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital.

These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29% so we're expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet. pic.twitter.com/WTK164nMfZ

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 23, 2020

In a statement to The Verge, the company notes that the feature will be rolling out to iOS and the web this week, with Android seeing the functionality in the coming weeks.

If you’re one of the people that have tweets flagged and feel like Twitter is “taking away your free speech,” there’s always Parler…

What do you think? Glad to see Twitter adding this functionality for tweets with misinformation? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Due to a bug, your Twitter Fleets may be viewable past the 24-hour window
• Twitter is possibly considering adding a much-needed dislike button
• If you absolutely need to, Instagram will let you go live for up to four hours
• Surprise, surprise, Snapchat is releasing its own TikTok-like feature called Spotlight

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.