Twitter has decided to take a measure that many will applaud and others will do the opposite. That decision in question is none other than limiting the visibility of tweets that directly copy and paste the content of another account. The motive or reason for doing so is that they think that this way they can provide a solution to SPAM and disinformation campaigns or media manipulation that can be generated within the network.
Tweet against copy and paste
Through the @TwitterComms account, the company has published a message indicating a new measure that they will carry out from now on. This consists of limiting the visibility that certain tweets could have. But don’t worry, because it won’t be something random but it will affect those publications that are dedicated to copying and pasting the message of others.
We’ve seen an increase in ‘copypasta,’ an attempt by many accounts to copy, paste, and Tweet the same phrase. 🍝🔁
When we see this behavior, we may limit the visibility of the Tweets. https://t.co/OCVudJPXPm
– Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) August 27, 2020
That is, all the tweets that trace each word and punctuation mark one by one will have less visibility in the timeline than the rest of the user of the social network. But why do they do this? Well, the company’s justification is that all these actions are usually coordinated and automated by botnets with the sole intention of generating SPAM and misinformation that could negatively affect the rest of the platform’s users, tilting the discourse to one side.
Surely these types of situations are familiar to you if you are an active user of the platform. Therefore, if you look at it from that point of view and thinking that SPAM accounts, which incite hatred, etc., will effectively be reduced visibility, then great. But what if the measures or algorithms are not able to differentiate between a copied and pasted text with a positive message from a negative one, what would happen then?
Unfortunately we do not have an answer, because Twitter has not given many details about how this “filter” will work. In addition, the botnets that automate these actions are sure to find a way to bypass the new measure. Moreover, many users have trolled Twitter a bit by copying and pasting the message published by them with the announcement of the measure and it does not seem to have hidden or reduced their visibility.
Anyway, we will have to be attentive to see if they give more details or what other possible measures they may consider. Of course, if it works correctly, it can be very interesting for all those who use Twitter, but are tired of the accounts that replicate hateful messages, misinformation, memes, etc. And if it does not come to fruition, at least it helps us all think a bit about how we want to use the platform and what we want to consume at the content level within it.
