FAQs
People in the US can sign up to become contributors in the pilot. Accounts must meet a few criteria to be eligible. Learn more here.
In addition, a small, randomized group of people in the US may see Helpful notes on Tweets, in order to help assess their quality.
In addition to people who have signed up to become Birdwatch contributors, small test groups in the US may see Helpful notes on on Tweets, in order to help assess their quality.
We want everyone to feel comfortable contributing to Birdwatch. Because of that, all contributors get a new, auto-generated display name (or alias) when they join Birdwatch. These aliases are not publicly associated with contributors’ Twitter accounts, so everyone can write and rate notes privately.
You can learn more about aliases here.
We believe regular people can valuably contribute to identifying and adding helpful context to potentially misleading information. Many of the internet’s existing collaborative sites thrive with the help of non-expert contributions — Wikipedia, for example — and, while it’s not a cure-all, research has shown the potential of incorporating crowdsourced based approaches as part of a broader toolkit to address misleading information on the internet, for example:
- Allen, Arechar, Pennycook, and Rand 2021
- Resnick, Alfayez, Im, and Gilbert 2021
- Bhuiyan, Zhang, Sehat, and Mitra 2020
- Kim and Walker 2020
In our pilot test of Birdwatch, we evaluated notes that Birdwatch would show on Tweets, and have found:
- The majority of people surveyed on Twitter found Birdwatch notes helpful
- People in surveys were 20-40% less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading Tweet after reading the note about it, compared to those who saw a Tweet without a note
- Most notes have been rated highly on accuracy by professional reviewers; it has been rare to find a note that reviewers agree is inaccurate
The people on Twitter span a wide gamut of backgrounds and experiences, and we believe that, working together, they can help create a better-informed world.
The people on Twitter span a wide gamut of backgrounds and experiences, and we look forward to everyone being able to contribute to this challenge.
All contributors and all Birdwatch contributions are subject to the Twitter Rules. Failure to abide by the rules can result in removal from the Birdwatch pilot, and/or other remediations.
If you believe a note may have violated the Twitter Rules, you can report it by clicking or tapping the ••• menu on a note, and then selecting “Report”, or by using this form.
Have more questions? Feel free to Tweet or message our team @birdwatch