Controlling fake news is a difficult task among social media. We already saw a lot of fakes news make issues. To prevent this un-trusted posts, all of the social media, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are working their best in different ways. Facebook flags the posts when they look like a fake. YouTube takes down the videos when it received a lot of dislikes and negative feedbacks. Among these, Twitter is used by most of the celebrities. When a wrong tweet share by a big star can lead to a lot of chaos. So, to handle this situation, Twitter asks users to read the tweet that contains articles or article links before re-tweet. 
Most of the time, people re-tweet without reading because they trust the people they follow. Even if they believe the persons, The details may not be accurate. So, To stop the fake news at one point, Twitter testing this idea.
Why does Twitter ask you to read the tweet that has an article before you re-tweet?
When you type something or share your thoughts on Twitter, you always know what you are doing and the meaning of your tweet. The post will go under your name, So, Most of the time, people check before they tweet. But When people want to re-tweet, it is based on the celebrities they follow. They believe whatever they tweet; It is real. If you notice in some news celebrities made a mistake and started some unwanted fake news that may affect other people. The fake news can be controlled when one person doesn’t re-tweet the post article. Asking a person to avoid the tweet is a better idea than a flag. It looks like it is not valid. But most of the time, Facebook Flag works better.
This initial step will help Twitter to reduce fake news tweets. Here users act as a moderator to prevent the news spread that doesn’t contain the truth. When a prompt asks users, They will think twice before pre-tweet.
How can a confirmation prompt on Twitter reduce fake news?
I will explain the process of How a single re-tweet can affect users and How a confirmation can prevent fake news using a flow chart below.
I will take a scenario Where there is a fake article. Random users tweet the material in their timeline with some hashtags. It will spread to the users who subscribed to the hashtag or regularly follow the topic. It may contain both regular users and celebrities. Usual users have fewer followers; thus, re-tweet may not spread the fake article to a lot of users. But when a celebrity re-tweet the section that is not true, It can ready to lot of people based on the number of followers. So, When a one person wakes up and realizes it looks fake and didn’t re-tweet, It can save a lot of peoples from the misleading article. That is the motto behind the new prompt from twitter. That is what happens with the above high follower’s person 3. The person realized it is not true and didn’t re-tweet. So, He saved 30K people from the fake news.
Wrap Up
The step of asking users before re-tweet is a great idea to avoid fake news. It is enough to handle the misleading articles. But if they expand this feature with the help of AI for every tweet that looks suspicious, it will be helpful to fight against fake news. Recently twitter rolls out the feature to limit who can reply to your tweets to make the clean interface in your twitter status.
Twitter keeps pushing a lot of features like Dark Mode, UI change to satisfy users. On the other hand, it is their responsibility to get rid of the unwanted news spread. When you didn’t bother, your platform will become non-reliable. So, You should balance both UI and what users are sharing. What is your thought about the prompt? Did you feel it can reduce the fake news? Comment below.
Selva Ganesh is the Chief Editor of this Blog. He is a Computer Science Engineer, An experienced Android Developer, Professional Blogger with 8+ years in the field. He completed courses about Google News Initiative. He runs Android Infotech which offers Problem Solving Articles around the globe.
Leave a Reply