Twitter To Work With AP And Reuters To Provide More Context Around Disputed Topics

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Twitter has announced that it is collaborating with news organizations such as the AP and Reuters to better tackle disinformation on its platform.

Internal Twitter teams already work to explain and contextualize content, but the two news organizations will assist provide more authoritative information, particularly when facts are in dispute, according to the platform.

Twitter has stated that it wants to be more proactive in delivering factual information about topics as they arise, rather than waiting for disinformation to appear.

“Rather than waiting for something to go viral, Twitter will contextualize developing discussions in real-time or ahead of time,” according to the platform.

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Reuters and the Associated Press will also provide comments on fact-checking services supplied by Twitter’s crowd-sourced Birdwatch program, which is presently in beta.

The partnership is an extension of Twitter’s previous efforts to combat disinformation on its platform.

The company’s Curation team already adds explanations to trending subjects and certain inaccurate tweets and will surface authoritative information when users search for specific terms or during important events such as elections or public health situations.

The new partnerships, however, will aid “when Twitter’s Curation team lacks the relevant expertise or access to a high enough amount of reliable reporting on Twitter,” according to Twitter.

According to Reuters, this will be the first time Twitter has formally cooperated with news agencies to offer factual information on its site. According to BBC News, the AP and Reuters already collaborate with Facebook to fact-check information on its site.

Twitter claims that its collaboration with the two news organizations would be distinct from its own enforcement efforts and that neither the Associated Press nor Reuters will be assessing whether or not tweets violate Twitter’s rules.

The new collaborations come at a time when regulators are scrutinizing social media sites for the amount of disinformation they propagate.

The problem has gotten even worse in the wake of the global COVID-19 outbreak, which has propagated misinformation about the virus and its vaccines online.

Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, urged on platforms to do more to battle coronavirus disinformation, including altering their algorithms to avoid amplifying it, earlier this month.

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