Twitter Tests New Original Tweeter Tag to Kill Fake Accounts

Twitter is testing a new feature on iOS and Android to help prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform. The company has started testing a new Original Tweeter tag that identifies the original poster of a tweet within replies.

The feature is currently available to a small percentage of Twitter users, and it’s supposed to be a really easy way of distinguishing between the original poster of a tweet and others, plus the fake accounts. And that’s going to be incredibly helpful when you are reading popular tweets — especially the ones from people like Elon Musk, where fake Elon Musks are always trying to get you to buy some fake cryptocurrency or sign-up for a fake giveaway. This new tag will help you cull all these fake accounts.

And even for normal, much less popular conversations on Twitter, that’s going to be really helpful when you are conversing within a tweet. “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. As part of this work, we’re exploring adding more context to discussions by highlighting relevant replies – like those from the original Tweeter,” Sara Haider, Twitter’s Director of Product Management, told TechCrunch.

The new Original Tweeter tag is part of Twitter’s much-bigger push to make the platform more conversational. Twitter has been very open about the upcoming changes it’s experimenting with, and some of these changes include algorithm-sorted replies, a status feature, icebreakers, etc. The changes are quite drastic, so Twitter will be very careful and roll out these new features — like this new Original Tweeter tag — in phases for a smooth rollout.