USA Today reports…

Twitter is enlisting its users to help combat misinformation on its service by flagging and notating misleading and false tweets.

The pilot program unveiled Monday, called Birdwatch, allows a preselected group of users – for now, only in the U.S. – who sign up through Twitter. Those who want to sign up must have a U.S.-based phone carrier, verified email and phone number, and no recent Twitter rule violations.

Twitter said it wants both experts and non-experts to write Birdwatch notes. It cited Wikipedia as a site that thrives with non-expert contributions.

“In concept testing, we’ve seen non-experts write concise, helpful and easy-to-understand notes, often citing valuable expert sources,” the company wrote in a blog post.

I’m glad that they are looking into checks and balances in the system. But I’ve worked as a librarian and I’ve done search engine optimization; they are similar, but not the same. SEO can sell books and a librarian can get you the right book. One is easier to monetize.