Regardless, they have reached the “there are a lot of questions” stage of the project. Perhaps we will have some answers. How does a Birdwatch co

Reflections on Birdwatch: Week 1 - by Alex Power

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2022-05-12 22:30:07

Regardless, they have reached the “there are a lot of questions” stage of the project. Perhaps we will have some answers.

How does a Birdwatch comment start? A member of the program sees a Tweet, and writes1 a commentary on it. There is no queue2 of “high-volume Tweets that might need a Birdwatch comment” — at least not publicly.

After a week, I have one comment: it is impossible to write Birdwatch comments quickly while getting the tone right. After a few comments, there is a tendency to find you are writing “neutral commentary” that takes the form of “Mr. So-and-so is a stupid person who enjoys lying in order to mislead the public”.

On the other hand, the “I am a partisan pretending to be non-partisan in order to write partisan-leaning comments” tone is quite easy to get right.

In conclusion: you can’t rate Birdwatch commenters on an “Uber-like” 5-star system, where dropping to 4 stars means you’re fired3. That only rewards the consistently mediocre. And, well, Twitter is often mediocre without Birdwatch, there’s no need to rush more mediocrity.