Nina Jankowicz, director of President Joe Biden’s newly created Disinformation Governance Board, has called for enabling blue-check Twitter users such as her to help police commentary on the social media platform by allowing them to edit tweets that they consider to be false or misleading.
Jankowicz made her comments in a viral video that surfaced online on Tuesday. After lamenting that many verified Twitter users don’t deserve to have blue-check status because they aren’t trustworthy, she said, “So verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter the same sort of way that Wikipedia is so they can add context to certain tweets.”
For example, Jankowicz argued, if former President Donald Trump weren’t banned from Twitter and posted a message claiming that there was voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a verified user could add context, such as information from lawsuits concerning the issue or comments by a state election official. Giving verified users such power would provide “context so that people have a fuller picture rather than just an individual claim on a tweet.”
Twitter already includes warning labels to help steer the narrative about sensitive topics, such as Trump’s election claims and the Covid-19 pandemic. It also offers a reply button for users who want to refute a user’s claim or add context.