Twitter Community Notes, the microblogging platform’s crowdsourcing fact-checking feature, is now made available to all users around the world. The feature was previously known as Birdwatch and was first introduced in January last year. The function aims to check the spread of fake news on the social network and use a community approach to help combat misleading information on Twitter. It was first introduced in the USA and later also in Brazil, Spain and the Philippines. Now the social media platform is available worldwide.
The company announced the feature via a tweet on his official Twitter handle. It said the feature would be visible to all users worldwide on Android, iOS and the web version. This means that Twitter users around the world can now see community notes on Twitter and rate them as helpful. The notes currently rated as helpful are available to all users on the Company website.
Starting today, Community Notes are visible all over the world 🌎🌍🌏
– Community Notes (@CommunityNotes) December 11, 2022
In the meantime, Twitter Users who want to make a bigger impact or write notes can now do so Registration to join Community Notes. The microblogging site also announced that it will expand its contributor base from country to country. Users who log in can rate notes and then have the option to write notes. Only notes marked as helpful will appear under Tweets.
Users wishing to join Community Notes must have an account older than 6 months and must not have recently received a notification of a Twitter Rules violation. According to the company, they must also have a verified phone number that is not linked to other accounts linked to Community Notes.
Already in September Twitter announced several new additions to its Birdwatch community fact-checking program, including a new onboarding process for contributors to carefully write and rate notes.
New contributors start with an Impact Score of zero, and this is initially increased by rating other notes as helpful or unhelpful. Once the Impact Score is five, users can write notes themselves, while repeated unhelpful notes result in the contributor being blocked from writing notes.
According to the report, Twitter also increased the visibility of notes in tweets at the time to reinforce what appeared to be a positive impact that Birdwatch (now known as Community Notes) has on the community.