Twitter's 'Birdwatch' crowd experiment courts familiar challenges

FILE PHOTO: The Twitter logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In January, just weeks after Twitter Inc permanently banned former President Donald Trump following the storming of the U.S. Capitol, the social media company started asking U.S. users to help identify and fact-check misleading tweets in a new pilot program.

But Birdwatch, which has about 2,000 participants and is currently cordoned off in its own section of the site, is already facing many of the same challenges as Twitter itself -discerning facts from partisan opinion and dealing with the potential for harassment or people trying to manipulate the system.