Twitter expands Community Notes to 4 more countries

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has expanded its crowd-sourced fact-checking programme, Community Notes, to four more countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

The company shared the information on Twitter via the Community Notes account, saying: "We are now admitting contributors from the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand -- welcome to Community Notes!"

"We admit new contributors in batches, growing the contributor base by 10 per cent per week," it added,

The microblogging platform also promised to include people from other countries.

"We're monitoring quality and continuing to expand to new countries over time," the company tweeted.

Community Notes aims to allow users to add more context to tweets through links and reports. The program has been widely used to debunk or correct claims made in popular tweets.

Twitter introduced the social fact-checking program last year in the US under "Birdwatch", but after Elon Musk started managing Twitter, he renamed "Birdwatch" to "Community Notes".

In November last year, Twitter rolled out an algorithm update that identifies more low-quality Community Notes, which will result in the suspension of contributor status for those who write unhelpful annotations to provide further clarification and context on tweets.

The company said that those users will have to earn back their "contributor" status, as Musk promotes community-based moderation as the future of the company.