Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking experiment reveals problems

On Feb. 5, Twitter flagged a post from controversial YouTuber Tim Pool that said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. The platform noted that the claim was disputed and turned off engagement “due to a risk of violence.”

But, on Birdwatch, the social media platform’s experiment in crowdsourced fact-checking, users overwhelmingly said the tweet was not misleading, according to a Feb. 14 analysis of Twitter data. And most Birdwatch users indicated in the tool that they found these notes that supported debunked claims helpful and informative.

“According to the...