So Twitter has been trying to figure out this whole "misinformation" thing. And you gotta feel for them. It's a tough nut to crack. How do you effectively silence non-mainstream opinions so people can finally have open-minded conversations on your platforms?

They've tried fact checking, then they tried fact checking and calling it "adding context," then they tried just purging all the undesirables from Twitter. But nothing seems to work!

People still want to express their own opinions publicly!

Well, Twitter's hoping this latest initiative, called "Birdwatch," will finally put the kibosh on wrongthink. And it will do it by empowering the mob to vote on the truthfulness tweets.

What could go wrong?

Here's there brief summary of what they hope to accomplish with Birdwatch:

Birdwatch allows people to identify information in Tweets they believe is misleading and write notes that provide informative context. We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable.

The obvious problem with this concept is that the most organized mob could just decide to suffocate the tweets of people they don't like with a flood of "notes" to "add context."

Twitter says they are trying to make sure that can't happen.

We know there are a number of challenges toward building a community-driven system like this — from making it resistant to manipulation attempts to ensuring it isn't dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors.

Given Twitter's track record of evenhandedness, however, I think we'd be right to suspect that Birdwatch will effectively be the equivalent of handing pitchforks to the leftist mob, empowering them to eliminate anyone who departs from the zeitgeist.

You can read more about Birdwatch here.