Alternative facts and the dread “fake news” aren’t limited to Facebook, as anyone who’s ever used Twitter can tell you. It’s just as easy/likely to share tweets that are rife with inaccuracies (despite being only 140 characters long)—even the president does it. So Twitter is finally, sort of working on a way to help stop the flow of misinformation. As The Washington Post reports, the social media company is looking into “adding a feature that would let users flag tweets that contain misleading, false or harmful information.”
WaPo cites two anonymous sources “familiar with the company’s projects,” who have very vague details on this proposed feature. It might be a “tiny tab” included in the drop-down menu that’s next to all tweets, and it also might never be released. Twitter wouldn’t comment on any specifics either, but Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the platform said there ”are no current plans to launch any type of product along these lines.” But the lack of details about this purported function—which Twitter may or may not actually be developing—is very much on brand for the social media site, which also recently promised to find a way to prevent online harassers from whipping up new accounts whenever they’re banned, without providing any info on just how it would accomplish that.