New Delhi: The BirdWatch feature on Twitter has been named and rebranded as Community Notes under Elon Musk. Musk earlier said that he does not like the name BirdWatch and wanted to change its features, so he announced the launch of Community Notes which he calls to be the ‘game changer’. The purpose of the Community Notes is the same as BirdWatch, that is, to identify misleading tweets.
What is Community Notes?
According to Twitter, Community Notes is a feature that helps people collaboratively identify and add notes to misleading tweets. It works in three stages, namely, notes, ratings and Community Notes site. The notes stage has MCQs and an open-text field where Community Notes users can why the tweet is misleading and can add links to give proof for the same. The notes that are rated as ‘helpful’ appear directly on tweets. The ‘ratings’ stage help users identify which notes are most helpful. The aim is to find notes that people from different perspectives find helpful and this is where ratings come into play.
The Community Notes site is a place where all the notes and ratings can be found. It works separately from the Twitter app or website as Community Notes is not a ‘popularity contest’ and there needs to be authenticity in the notes and ratings.
How to become a Contributor?
A contributor is one with access to adding notes to a tweet. To become a contributor, a user must have not received a Twitter Rules violation notice in recent times, must have joined Twitter at least six months ago and must verify the phone number linked to the account.
