Twitter expands research group to study content moderation

By Sheila Dang and Katie Paul

(Reuters) – Twitter Inc plans to offer extra information to exterior researchers who research on-line misinformation and moderation, the social media firm stated Thursday, a part of what it says is an effort to extend transparency on the platform.

The corporate may even open an utility course of to permit extra individuals working in academia, civil society and journalism to affix the Twitter Moderation Analysis Consortium, a bunch that Twitter fashioned in pilot mode earlier this yr and has entry to the datasets.

Whereas researchers have studied the move of dangerous content material on social platforms for years, they’ve typically executed so with out direct involvement from social media corporations.

Throughout a briefing with reporters, Twitter stated it hopes the info will result in new varieties of research about how efforts to battle on-line misinformation work.

Twitter has already shared datasets with researchers about coordinated efforts backed by overseas governments to govern data on Twitter.

The corporate stated it now plans to share details about different content material moderation areas, comparable to tweets which were labeled as doubtlessly deceptive.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang and Katie Paul; modifying by Jonathan Oatis)