Twitter to warn users if they try to like a flagged tweet

The micro-blogging platform began showing a warning before the 2020 US presidential election when the users tried to retweet a flagged tweet.

Now, the company has expanded the warning functionality which is rolling out on the Web and iOS first and will come to Android devices in the coming weeks.

"Giving context on why a labeled Tweet is misleading under our election, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media rules is vital," Twitter said.

"These prompts helped decrease Quote Tweets of misleading information by 29 per cent so we're expanding them to show when you tap to like a labeled Tweet," the company said in a tweet.

Twitter labeled nearly 300,000 tweets under its Civic Integrity Policy for content that was disputed and potentially misleading in the US election period from October 27 till November 11.

These represent 0.2 per cent of all US election-related Tweets sent during this time period.

According to the company, 456 of those Tweets were also covered by a warning message and had engagement features limited (tweets could be Quote Tweeted but not Retweeted, replied to or liked).

Twitter in October added additional warnings and restrictions on tweets with a misleading information label from US political figures, US-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers, or that obtain significant engagement.

Twitter said that people must tap through a warning to see these Tweets, and then will only be able to Quote Tweet; likes, Retweets and replies will be turned off, and these Tweets won't be algorithmically recommended by Twitter.

When people attempted to retweet tweets with a misleading information label, they saw a prompt pointing them to credible information about the topic before they were able to amplify it.