X's Community Notes missed 93% of false US midterm claims
What's the story
A recent NewsGuard study has revealed that Community Notes, a crowd-sourced fact-checking system used by X, failed to flag 93.1% of false claims related to the US midterm elections. The oversight has left a number of misleading posts open for millions of users on the platform. The findings raise concerns about the reliability of crowd-sourced moderation in combating politically charged misinformation.
Misinformation spread
Misleading posts go uncorrected
The study uncovered a number of posts containing false claims about the elections, including allegations of electoral fraud and incorrect information about voter identification rules.
Out of 189 total posts examined, only 13 were corrected by Community Notes.
The uncorrected false claims continued to get millions of interactions ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
Accountability questioned
At least 4 false claims were promoted by Musk
The study also puts a spotlight on Elon Musk, who has been a vocal supporter of the system as an alternative to traditional fact-checking.
NewsGuard identified at least four false claims about the midterms that were promoted by Musk, but none were corrected by Community Notes.
This raises questions about the effectiveness and accountability of this crowd-sourced system in combating misinformation.
Platform features
What is Community Notes?
Launched in late 2022, Community Notes lets users add context or corrections to posts.
The notes show up when contributors who usually disagree with each other find a submission helpful, which is supposed to minimize the impact of any one political bias.
However, the NewsGuard findings indicate that this principle doesn't always apply to contentious political claims.
Effectiveness debate
Mixed results on Community Notes' effectiveness
Research on Community Notes has yielded mixed results.
While it has been effective against some types of misinformation like false vaccine claims, its success may depend on contributors' consensus on the facts.
Users' partisan loyalties could make achieving consensus more difficult, especially for contentious claims where misinformation is most divisive.
Industry trend
Growing trend of community-led moderation
The model of community-led moderation is gaining traction in the tech industry as platforms rethink their reliance on professional fact-checkers.
Meta, Facebook, and Instagram's parent company, scrapped its third-party fact-checking program in the US last year.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it had resulted in "too much censorship," a claim that professional fact-checkers have strongly disputed.