Over the weekend, Twitter rolled out its Community Notes feature to all users globally. Formerly known as Birdwatch when it was launched during Jack Dorsey's reign as Twitter CEO back in January 2021, Community Notes is a way for the microblogging platform to combat disinformation.
The feature takes an open-source approach to debunking misleading content by allowing moderators to append informative and helpful notes to tweets to add context. Users can then vote on whether they find the context provided helpful or not.
Previously, Community Notes was only available to users in the US. "People everywhere can now see and rate notes, helping to ensure notes are helpful to those from a wide range of views," Twitter announced.
Twitter users who are interested in participating can sign up on Twitter's Community Notes page. Contributor base will be expanded country-by-country. Contributors will only be able to rate notes at first, but they will also be eligible to provide context over time.
New Twitter CEO Elon Musk called the feature "a gamechanger [sic] for improving accuracy on Twitter."
The business mogul implemented many changes to the social media company since he acquired it for $44 billion. For starters, he fired the company's executives and cut the number of employees in half. He also revamped Twitter's Blue subscription to give regular users the ability to have a verified checkmark for $8 a month. However, this was eventually pulled as many trolls exploited the new feature to impersonate people and post inappropriate content. Twitter is set to relaunch Blue today at a cost of $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for iPhone users.
To get a verified checkmark, Blue subscribers will now need to verify their phone number. They can change their profile photo, user handle, or name any time, but they will temporarily lose their checkmark until Twitter reviews their account again.
