Data journalism as a cure against misinformation – Journalism research news #interhacktives journalismresearchnews.org/data-journalis…
A useful and timely reminder that perception on Twitter is often not entirely congruent with reality — even about Twitter itself… twitter.com/MsHannahMurphy…
I’m just an ordinary guy, looking at the weather, and asking it to stop pissing it down before I have to go and collect my daughters from school.
Well, I think we all now have more insight into how hard it is to run a social network well…
I have very little confidence that the changes being rolled now address this issue in any way, which is a shame. But there is potential in a more widespread and genuine verification system.
Done. Back to writing.
While the existing system only verified a narrow strata of journalism (and other professions), those who got it won a disproportionate power, which some misused. Every sociologist, fiction writer and political journalist giving health advice was a potential misinformation vector.
More widespread verification — “this person is who they say they are” passes the buck back to the reader to check if the person opining on a subject has any expertise on the matter, in a way a narrow “verified to be important by arbitrary standards” doesn’t.
Their ill-informed reckons could outpace the informed journalism of subject experts, simply because they were “blue ticked”. The existing system has hardly been a magic-bullet against misinformation. It’s human nature to delegate the need to assess accuracy to gatekeepers.
For example, the lack of verification of B2B journalists in the healthcare sector during the pandemic was a distinct issue on Twitter, with Verified users who knew nothing about epidemiology, virology, immunology and health care management getting huge audiences instead.
I hate to say it, but there’s an element of truth to this — as long as it’s widespread verification, not widespread “pay for tick”. The existing verification system was, in effect, as status system, and that brought problems (short 🧵) twitter.com/elonmusk/statu…
This is certainly a take.
Just the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK at launch. t.co/Q4g0TQ3wS… 
Here comes the new Blue… Update in the iOS App Store now. #TwitterBlue t.co/zyB858cH0… 
Gah. Great website. No RSS. No newsletter. Protected Twitter account. How am I meant to know when you write something new?
Sadly, a birthday weekend doesn’t make me exempt from the business of being Daddy taxi for most of it: Brownies, swimming lessons (x2), Sea Lights and (joy of joys) a children’s bouncy castle party. I will need ALL THE COFFEE. ☕️
We are now in the 10th straight day of Twitter being the main character of Twitter.
@eduardosuarez He has form here, though. He also binned Tesla’s PR department.
@aendra @johncthompson @FT I was vaguely considering seeing if I can get follow.Interhacktives.com up and running for the current gen of students.
But it would be cool to see the FT do it, too.
@rasmus_kleis Enjoy your break.
@johncthompson I’ve been on there for years, and I can’t remember why I chose the mastodon.social sever. Probably just because it was the main one. There was a journalism-specific server for a while. I can’t remember who was involved - maybe @aendra?
Oh, and if you’re playing with Mastodon, I’m @adders@mastodon.social:
🚨 News 🚨
Just updated my piece on the #TwitterLayoffs — it looks certain that the Curation team is gone: