(CNET) Twitter is exploring whether to add brightly colored labels beneath misleading tweets from politicians and public figures, a move that could make high-profile users more wary about spreading lies.
The social network is still testing these labels and it’s unclear if Twitter will eventually roll out the feature. The experiment shows that Twitter is considering new ways to combat misinformation, including from politicians, a top concern ahead of the 2020 US elections.
NBC News, citing a leaked demo that included the new feature, reported Thursday that tweets from journalists and fact-checkers who correct the misleading information could appear below the label and the visibility of the tweet would be reduced. Twitter’s approach is similar to how Facebook handles misinformation on its site, but it goes a step further because it involves political speech. Facebook doesn’t send posts and ads from politicians to fact-checkers, because it considers them newsworthy.
