Elon Musk has noted several times that he believes Twitter’s Community Notes system would be a great way to battle misinformation. The system is simple, as it allows users to “create a better informed world by empowering people on Twitter to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading tweets.”
And as per a recent announcement on Twitter, the social media platform’s Community Notes feature will be rolling out to media content as well. What’s particularly impressive about the feature is the fact that notes which are attached to an image would automatically appear on recent and future matching images as well.
Such a system would go a long way toward battling misleading media. It is unfortunately very simple and easy today to spread dishonest media, especially with the advent of AI generated images and videos.
That being said, the new Community Notes feature would only be available to contributors that have a specific Writing Impact score.
“If you’re a contributor with a Writing Impact of 10 or above, you’ll see a new option on some Tweets to mark your notes as ‘About the image.’ This option can be selected when you believe the media is potentially misleading in itself, regardless of which Tweet it is featured in,” Twitter wrote.
It should be noted that raters and readers would be able to see Notes on Media slightly differently. This way, it’s clear to Twitter’s users that the notes are about the media in the post, not the specific tweet itself. For now, the feature supports tweets that feature a single image, but plans are underway to expand the capability to videos and tweets with multiple images and videos.
Twitter also noted that the feature is still in its early stages, and thus, the system is currently tuned to err on the side of precision when matching images. This means that the system would probably not match every image that looks like a match to users. The social media platform pledges to tune the system further to expand its coverage and make it more accurate overall, however, so a more ironclad solution would likely be rolled out in the future.
More details about Twitter’s new Notes on Media function can be viewed here.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
