Filipinos Can Now Report Misleading Tweets

Filipinos Can Now Report Misleading Tweets
(Source: Unsplash.com)

Have you been reading plenty of fake news and tweets on Twitter lately? Sadly, many people fall victim to false information spread on social media platforms. Inaccurate information can cause a lot of harm, especially during these stressful times. 

Read: Toxic Positivity, Fake News and All the Things We *Don’t* Need During a Health Crisis

The good news is that you can do something about it now. Exactly how, you may be wondering? Social media giant Twitter announced that users in the Philippines can now report tweets with misleading information. All you need to do is to click on the three dots found at the upper right-hand corner and then choose “Report Tweet”, and “It’s misleading” in the options.

This reporting feature was first made available to Twitter users in the U.S, South Korea and Australia way back in August 2021. They examined if the tool was adequate for the Twitter community to report misinformation in real-time.

“The learnings garnered through the test were used to inform our efforts to potentially roll out a misinformation reporting feature more broadly. They also helped us better understand and identify misinformation trends and emerging narratives on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson said, according to BusinessWorld

It looks like the feature works because it’s all systems go in the Philippines. Aside from the Philippines, Twitter also made this new feature available to Brazil and Spain. This decision was prompted by these countries’ geographical diversity and because the upcoming elections in the Philippines and Brazil could further test the usefulness of the feature during civic events.

So what will happen once you report a misleading tweet? Twitter explained that they have a special team that reviews each report – including Filipino ones – against the Twitter Rules and Terms of Service. Hence, even if the tweet you’re reporting is in Filipino slang, the Twitter team will get to understand it. 

Since the reporting feature was launched, Twitter said they received 3.73 million reports of 1.95 million distinct tweets authored by 64 thousand distinct accounts. Plenty of those tweets were “off-topic,” Twitter found, resulting in a low-violation rate of less than 10%. Twitter also mentioned how the feature gave a sense of empowerment to users – most of whom would instead report a potentially misleading tweet than quote or reply to it. Sometimes, it’s just not worth the trouble, right?

With this advancement, Twitter aspires to “ultimately advance our ability to mitigate misleading content, as well as help protect civic integrity during the upcoming elections this year in the Philippines.”

Art Macky Arquilla

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