Social network Twitter allows users to flag content

Starting Tuesday, some users from the US, South Korea and Australia will be able to report misleading tweets

Twitter on Tuesday announced a new feature which allows users to flag content that could contain misinformation, a scourge that has only grown during the current Covid-19 health crisis.

We’re testing a feature for you to report Tweets that seem misleading – as you see them, the social network said from its safety and security account.

Starting Tuesday, a button would be visible to some users from the US, South Korea and Australia to choose “it’s misleading” after clicking “report tweet.” Users can then be more specific, flagging the misleading tweet as potentially containing misinformation about “health,” “politics” and “other.”

We’re assessing if this is an effective approach so we’re starting small, the San Francisco-based company said.

We may not take action on and cannot respond to each report in the experiment, but your input will help us identify trends so that we can improve the speed and scale of our broader misinformation work, the company said.

Twitter, like Facebook and YouTube, regularly comes under fire from critics who say it does not do enough to fight the spread of misinformation.

But the platform does not have the resources of its Silicon Valley neighbours, and so often relies on experimental techniques that are less expensive than recruiting large number of moderators.

Moderators are ultimately responsible for determining which content actually violates Twitter’s terms of use, but the network has said it hopes to eventually use a system that relies on both human and automated analysis to detect suspicious posts.

Such efforts have ramped up as Twitter toughened its misinformation rules during the Covid-19 pandemic and during the US presidential election.