During this pandemic, we have seen a lot of information on social media that sometimes is not real. This causes chaos and fear among society, but this information spreads because many users do not even read the articles and they just share them by only reading the title. The problem remains in the difficult situation that we are facing due to COVID-19, people are also suffering because we are all trying to adapt to this new lifestyle and reading fake news is definitely not the best way to adapt.

This issue happens mainly on Facebook and Twitter. The misinformation is easy to spread. Twitter is trying to stop the spread of misinformation on their platform by testing a new feature which opens a link to an article before the user would be able to share it or retweet. As Twitter mentioned, “it was designed to empower healthily and informed public conversation.” This feature will actually at least open the article so any user can see that the article is written out and the link does not lead to any malicious websites.

In May, Twitter received many comments of users asking to check if the replies into tweets include harmful language that could be offensive to other users. “When things get heated, you may say things you don’t mean,” the company explained. “To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.” Last month, Twitter also displayed fact-check tags on 2 tweets from Donald Trump’s account. The problem here was that those tweets featured misleading information regarding mail-in ballots and voter fraud. By this issue, the company has also been testing a feature that would allow users to limit who can reply to their tweets.

This is a great feature because it will encourage people to double think their behavior and the words they will be using. This will be a huge help. Imagine how many users on the website have bullying problems or self-esteem issues. A harmful comment can go a long way. Twitter is trying to create a safe environment for all its users.

This platform is definitively one of the preferred sites to discover news from all around the world because they are mostly published faster than the journals do. Twitter can indeed be powerful but sometimes dangerous. The new features that are been testing by Twitter would be a great way to make the platform a better and safer place.