The social media giant Twitter is partnering with Reuters and the Associated Press to address “misinformation” in people’s online discussions.
In a statement about the partnerships, the platform said that they are working to “expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information on Twitter.”
“We are committed to making sure that when people come to Twitter to see what’s happening, they are able to easily find reliable information. Twitter will be able to expand the scale and increase the speed of our efforts to provide timely, authoritative context across the wide range of global topics and conversations that happen on Twitter every day,” the statement continued.
Twitter said that currently, their Curation team “helps give people context to make informed decisions about what they see on Twitter.”
“When large or rapidly growing conversations happen on Twitter that may be noteworthy, controversial, sensitive, or may contain potentially misleading information, Twitter’s Curation team sources and elevates relevant context from reliable sources,” Twitter said.
The statement explained that the platform is already providing curation to Trends, the Explore tab, Search, Prompts, and Labels.
During the “initial phase of the program”, AP and Reuters will be focusing solely on English-language content.
“Trust, accuracy and impartiality are at the heart of what Reuters does every day, providing billions of people with the information they need to make smart decisions. Those values also drive our commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation. We’re excited to partner with Twitter to leverage our deep global and local expertise to serve the public conversation with reliable information,” Hazel Baker, head of UGC Newsgathering at Reuters said in a statement.
Likewise, Tom Januszewski, Vice President of Global Business Development at AP, issued an almost identical statement about “leveraging” their company.
“AP has a long history of working closely with Twitter, along with other platforms, to expand the reach of factual journalism. This work is core to our mission. We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts.
Twitter explained that this new program is “just one” part of their “ongoing efforts to help people understand the conversation happening on our service. People experience a range of public conversations on Twitter every day, and we’re committed to continuing our work to elevate credible information and context.”
