Twitter might soon slap you with warning labels if your tweets aren’t true

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Social media platforms have been struggling with how to handle misinformation for a while. New findings from app researcher Jane Manchun Wong show how Twitter could possibly be addressing that issue.

According to Wong’s findings, the company is currently testing a warning label system that would point out potential misinformation on posts within the app. These warning labels would contain a message, depending on the accuracy of a tweet’s information. Instead of simply censoring information presented on Twitter, this feature would aim to educate users on the potential spread of misinformation.

As of now, the feature contains three warning labels for three different levels of misinformation. “Get the Latest”, “Stay Informed”, and “Misleading” are the potential categories. In Wong’s findings, different labels are presented depending on the context of the tweet.

Here’s what some of these warnings look like

Twitter is working on three levels of misinformation warning labels:

“Get the latest”, “Stay Informed” and “Misleading” pic.twitter.com/0RdmMsRAEk

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 31, 2021

As we can see, Twitter’s labels will aim to accomplish different things, depending on context. When Wong tweeted “Snorted 60 grams of dihydrogen monoxide and I’m not feeling so well now,” the app aims to educate about H2O. When Wong claimed that we were turtles because of some illegitimate logic, Twitter wants to educate users about fallacies.

This could be a great way to combat the spread of misinformation on Twitter. The fact that the company is aiming to educate, rather than censor, is a great angle to approach this particular problem. Free speech is incredibly important, and social media platforms should aim to be as free as possible.

There is no word of when or even if this feature will be implemented. Twitter has not confirmed or denied anything at this point, and Wong’s findings are very preliminary. Still, it is nice to see that the company is working on something to stop the spread of misinformation on the platform.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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