Twitter against fake news

One of the most outstanding advantages of the internet in general is that of its easy access and within everyone's reach. Anyone can get an email box and an account on any social network. The information that circulates is a lot and very quickly.
When one of the news on Twitter was born in 2006, the platform created by Jack Dorsey brought immediacy to the social media scene. In a few words, users could tweet whatever content they wanted and reach thousands of followers. Recall that initially the maximum number of characters allowed in a tweet was 140 and in 2017 the number was expanded to 280.
Twitter became widely used and popular with celebrities, politicians, journalists and the media in general due to the possibility of communicating quickly and easily. The problem is that as the years passed what is known as fake news on Twitter became more common. As the name implies, it refers to data, images or videos that spread lies. False information can be driven by groups with political or economic interests behind it, by users seeking fame and followers, or simply by people who enjoy harming others.
With the advance of the coronavirus pandemic, the use of social networks in general, and Twitter in particular, grew a lot. The site created by Dorsey reported 166 million users per day in the first quarter of 2020, which represents 23% more than the same period last year and 8% more than the last quarter of 2019.
Users are looking for information about the coronavirus and to improve the service Twitter has tightened controls on the data generated around the disease.

Start of the year with more control

In February 2020, Twitter reported on its official blog that it would create rules with the aim of monitoring the manipulation of information. From different studies, they concluded that users looked for labels on potentially false content, that information considered harmful was removed and that suspicious accounts were punished.
Twitter's new measures to control fakes news would be applied differently when analyzing tweets with three questions that would be used as guides:

• Has the content been tampered with?
• In what context is it shared? Is it published in a misleading way?
• Is the content likely to affect public safety or cause serious harm?

Depending on the responses that Twitter obtained when analyzing the tweet, the measures to be taken could be to apply a tag, show a warning to the user before they share it or like it, reduce the visibility of the original publication or complement the information with links to pages that give more data about the content.
The rules began to work as of March 5, 2020 and the company stated that it did so in order to best contribute to the public conversation.

For good information about the coronavirus

People suddenly underwent a huge change in their lives due to the expansion of the covid-19. In a scenario in which they were worried about the effects of the disease, many went to Twitter to look for news about the coronavirus.
Given the large number of false references that circulated, many of which endangered the lives of citizens by recommending dangerous measures to prevent or cure the disease, on May 11 Twitter officially announced how it would update the protocol to control fake news about the coronavirus.
Changes would be made to the tags receiving the coronavirus-related tweets. The new IDs would be divided into three categories based on what the post said. The tweet can be tagged as confusing information, debated information, or uncontested information. Depending on the case, the tweet will be tagged or removed.

The latest news on Twitter and the control applied to fake news show the great influence that social networks have on the number of people who use them and the power they can have in the lives of users. That strong presence makes companies have a high responsibility and must control what happens on their platforms. Twitter adopts an open and transparent behavior that seeks to improve the quality of the public debate that in these times takes place virtually.