Twitter Community Notes, the microblogging platform’s crowdsourced fact checking feature, is now rolling out to all users across the world. The feature was previously known as ‘Birdwatch’, which was first introduced in January last year. The feature is designed to check the spread of fake news on the social network, and uses a community-driven approach to help address misleading information on Twitter. Initially, it was rolled out in the US and later rolled out to Brazil, Spain, and the Philippines as well. Now the social media platform has made it live across the globe.
The company announced the feature via a tweet on its official Twitter handle. It said that the feature is visible to all users globally on Android, iOS and the Web version. This means that Twitter users around the world can now see and rate community notes on Twitter as helpful. The notes that are currently rated helpful can be accessed by all users on the company’s website.
Beginning today, Community Notes are visible around the world 🌎🌍🌏
— Community Notes (@CommunityNotes) December 11, 2022
Meanwhile, Twitter users who want to have a higher impact or write notes can now sign up to join Community Notes. The microblogging site also said that it would expand its contributor base country-by-country. Users who sign up will be able to rate notes, and then will eventually gain the ability to write notes. Only notes that are marked as helpful will show up under tweets.
Users who want to join Community Notes must have an account that is older than 6 months and have not received a recent notice of violating Twitter’s rules. They must also have a verified phone number, which is not associated with other Community Notes-linked accounts, according to the company.
Back in September, Twitter announced several new additions to its Birdwatch community fact-checking programme including a new onboarding process for contributors to write and rate notes thoughtfully.
New contributors start with an Impact Score of zero and it will initially be increased by rating other notes as Helpful or Not Helpful. Once the Impact Score becomes five, users will be able to write notes themselves while repeated Not Helpful notes will get the contributor blocked from writing notes.
At the time, Twitter was also said to increase the visibility of notes on tweets to increase the seemingly positive impact Birdwatch (now known as Community Notes) has had on the community, as per the report.
