Twitter just released voice tweets, a feature able to hold 140 seconds of audio, but experts warn content could be harder to police.
Twitter said June 18 that the feature will be available on iOS. While voice tweets are currently not available to all users, CNN reported it should be expanded to all users in the coming weeks.
You can Tweet a Tweet. But now you can Tweet your voice!
Rolling out today on iOS, you can now record and Tweet with audio. pic.twitter.com/jezRmh1dkD
— Twitter (@Twitter) June 17, 2020
The company has occasionally been criticized for unbalanced fact checking and this new voice feature could create even more policing and fact checking challenges. John Redgrave, chief executive of the content moderation company Sentropy, told The Washington Post, “Any new medium for distribution creates additional moderation challenges.”
Among the new challenges audio presents could be a need for increased manual review, “Moderating audio takes more resources because it takes more manual analysis,” Graham Brookie of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, told The Washington Post.
Alleged unbalanced enforcement of its policies related to tweets on mail-in voting, prompted President Donald Trump to issue an executive order on social media companies to remove their protections against liability. (RELATED: Twitter Won’t Remove Chinese Official’s Tweet Suggesting US Army Introduced Virus Into Wuhan)
The Twitter page of US President Donald Trump indicating an executive order on May 28, 2020, after threatening to shutter social media platforms. (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)
Moderation tools used for videos on Twitter could overlap with any current audio moderation tools.
Facebook, unlike Twitter, has not taken an increased stance on moderating content, with CEO Mark Zuckerburg telling Fox News, “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth.”
Currently the new feature can only be used on original tweets, according to Twitter’s Help Center.
The Daily Caller has reached out to Twitter for comment.