Twitter is working further on the functioning of misinformation labels; trying to make them stand out more and reducing their reaction times. It isn’t certain whether the company will bring any changes to labels before the U.S. elections, which are only 4 weeks away.
It has been reported that the possible changes that Twitter is considering making to labels include replacing their blue color with a more eye-catching color like red or magenta, and deciding to flag users who repeatedly post false information.
The feature of labels was originally launched by Twitter in early 2020, after receiving feedback over the spread of fabricated information across its platform. The feature was then expanded to misinformation related to the coronavirus and later to misinformation related to elections and civil processes. Twitter additionally stated in September that it would start labelling posts that claimed election victory before the official announcement of election results.
A lot of Twitter’s labels have been added to President Donald Trump’s ‘'problematic’' tweets, among thousands of other posts on the platform that contained inaccurate and misleading information.
The reason why Twitter is considering making labels more overt and direct is because of the criticisms it received over the execution of labels as being ‘'too slow’'.
Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington has been analyzing Twitter's labeling responses, and explained that in the 20-30 minutes until a post is labelled or taken down, the information in it has already spread, especially for posts that reach out to larger audiences.
The first time Twitter labelled Trump’s tweets regarding mail-in voting, the action was taken in 8 hours. The shortest time Twitter has taken to label Trump’s tweets has been 2-3 hours.
