Overview

Birdwatch aims to create a better informed world, by empowering people on Twitter to collaboratively add helpful notes to Tweets that might be misleading.

Contributors can identify Tweets they believe are misleading, write notes that provide context to the Tweet, and rate the quality of other contributors’ notes. Through consensus from a broad and diverse set of people, our eventual goal is that the most helpful notes will be visible directly on Tweets, available to everyone on Twitter.

How it works

In this phase, Birdwatch has three core elements: notes, ratings, and the Birdwatch site.

1. Notes People who have signed up to be Contributors can add notes to any Tweet they think might be misleading.
   
   Notes are composed of multiple-choice questions and an open text field where contributors can explain why they believe a Tweet is misleading, as well as link to relevant sources.
   
   Birdwatch notes are public, and anyone in the US can browse the Birdwatch site to see them. For those not in the pilot, notes currently appear only on the Birdwatch site. They are intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, while we build Birdwatch and gain confidence that it produces context people find helpful and appropriate. People in the pilot may see notes directly on Tweets when browsing Twitter, and are able to rate those notes for helpfulness.
   
   Learn more about writing notes →
2. Ratings Contributors can rate the helpfulness of other's notes. Ratings help identify which notes are most helpful, and allow Birdwatch to raise the visibility of those found most helpful by people from different perspectives.
   
   Ratings also inform our reputation models that recognize those whose contributions are consistently found helpful by a diverse set of people.
   
   Learn more about rating notes →
3. The Birdwatch site The Birdwatch site is the home for all Birdwatch notes and ratings, separate from the main Twitter apps, and is available at birdwatch.twitter.com. Birdwatch notes that have been rated helpful by enough contributors from different points of view will appear directly on Tweets for a limited, randomized group of people in the US. They will also be able to rate notes for helpfulness. Beyond that, Birdwatch notes do not affect display of Tweets or enforcement of Twitter Rules.
   
   Our focus during this phase of the pilot is gaining confidence that Birdwatch produces context people from different points of view find helpful and informative.
   
   Visit the Birdwatch Site →

Transparency and visibility

We believe it’s important for people to understand how Birdwatch works, and to be able to help shape it. To that end, we’re taking significant steps to make Birdwatch transparent.

Even though only Birdwatch contributors and people included in test groups can write and rate notes, anyone in the US can access the Birdwatch site to browse contributions. Additionally, all data contributed to Birdwatch will be publicly available and for download in tsv files.

As we develop algorithms that power Birdwatch — such as reputation, consensus, and ranking systems — we also aim to make them publicly available. Our current implementation is already available here.

We hope that steps like these will enable experts, researchers, and the public to analyze or audit Birdwatch, identifying opportunities or flaws that can help us more quickly build an effective community-driven solution.