Comment by youeseh
5 years ago
Instead of being the police, Twitter should do what Rotten Tomatoes does. There are plenty of people - journalists and researchers analyzing the facts behind what celebrities say. They should analyze what the analysts say and display a score.
Even better, directly link the research on the topic, from both sides. Instead of drawing a conclusion on behalf of everybody, give people what they need to draw their own.
That's what already happens. Look at the comments on any prominent person's tweet and you'll see people going back and forth about what's right and what's false.
No one needs to do anything here. People can research and find stuff out for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.
Absolutely, I am someone who always reads comments (yes, even on YouTube) because they often serve as a poor man's fact check. However, Twitter apparently has plans to sabotage that: https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/08/twitter-limit-replies-feature...
The problem then becomes, who decides which tweets to fact-check? If most politicians at the higher levels are liars, singling out a few of them is unfair even if Trump is notorious for it.
Twitter can clearly not fact-check every single tweet on its platform. But what if they did it for every tweet (maybe from a verified account) that X people report for being untruthful? Trump would look bad even if Twitter held everyone to the same standard, and the blue checkmark would come with some responsibility not to lie, so why not?
Who decides which Tweats to fact-check: If someone is famous enough, you can bet that there will be at least one reporter frothing for the opportunity to be counted among trusted fact-checkers. Twitter might have to figure out a balance among reviewers but thats a lot less work than fact-checking each message.
[insert black mirror joke reference]