Twitter is a popular social media platform that allows users to share short messages, images, videos and other content with their followers. However, Twitter also faces the challenge of dealing with misinformation, especially when it comes to images that are manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
To address this issue, Twitter has recently expanded its crowdsourced fact-checking feature, called Community Notes, to include images. This feature allows users to add context and information to tweets that may be misleading or inaccurate, and to rate the credibility of the sources. In this article, we will explain how this feature works and why it matters for Twitter users and society at large.
How Community Notes Work
Community Notes was launched in February 2023 as a pilot program that invited selected users to join a community of contributors who can add notes to tweets that are flagged by Twitter’s systems or reported by other users as potentially misleading. The contributors are vetted by Twitter and have to follow a set of guidelines and principles for adding notes. They can also earn points and badges for their contributions.
The notes appear below the tweets and provide additional information, context or sources that can help users evaluate the veracity of the content. The notes are also visible to other contributors who can upvote or downvote them based on their accuracy and relevance. The most helpful notes are displayed at the top.
In May 2023, Twitter announced that it was extending Community Notes to images, which are often used to spread misinformation or propaganda online. For example, a fake image of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral on Twitter last week, with some accounts pretending to be affiliated with reputable news outlets.
Now, contributors can add notes specifically related to an image, and that context will populate below “recent and future matching images,” according to Twitter. This means that if the same image appears in different tweets, the notes will follow it and inform users about its origin and authenticity.
To add a note to an image, contributors have to select the option “Add context to this image” from the menu below the tweet. They can then choose whether they are adding context to the tweet itself or to the image that’s featured in it. They can also specify if the image is real, fake or unclear, and provide evidence or sources to support their claim.
Currently, Community Notes only applies to single images, but Twitter says it is working on expanding it to videos and posts with multiple images.
