Twitter, the American microblogging and social networking service will partner with the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters to provide more timely credible information on the social networking platform, as part of an effort to combat the spread of misinformation.
The partnership will mark the first time Twitter has formally collaborated with news organizations, and it will work individually with both the AP and Reuters and the newswires will not interact with each other.
Twitter’s Curation team will be able to use the partnership to add more context to the breaking news and trends that circulate on Twitter, as well as assist with the company’s use of public service announcements during high-visibility events, misinformation labels, and more.
Currently, the Curation team is focused to add more information to content on Twitter’s Explore tab that includes Top Trends and other news. The team is also involved in how certain search results are ranked to ensure that content from high-quality searches appears at the top of results when certain keywords or hashtags are searched on Twitter.
The team may also be involved with tweets linked to major events that appear in the Explore tab on the Home Timeline, such as public health emergency, election integrity, or COVID-19. They may also help with the misinformation labels that appear on tweets that are allowed to remain public on Twitter but have been labeled with informative context from reliable sources.
The team, however, is distinct from Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, which evaluates when tweets violate Twitter’s guidelines and disciplinary action, such as removal or bans. Twitter stated that neither the AP nor Reuters will be involved in such judgments.
Earlier this year Twitter launched a program called Birdwatch, asking its users to help identify and fact-check misleading tweets.
Initially, the collaboration will focus on English-language content on Twitter, but the company expects the initiative to expand over time to include more languages and time zones. Twitter will evaluate new options to enroll partners who can support more languages throughout this initial phase.
