Let's say you're on the website formerly known as Twitter. Statistically, most of you aren't, but let's pretend.
You're doom-scrolling, as usual, when suddenly you spot a post claiming that ancient aliens
are living in bunkers beneath the pyramids of Giza and they haven't paid rent in nearly
12,000 years. But then, right underneath it, you spot a little window that says there actually aren't
any bunkers underneath the pyramids, alongside a link to a Wikipedia article on Squatter's
rights. The note stuck onto the bottom of a post, like a little, um, actually barnacle, is what
X-Corp likes to call a community note.
And it might just be the future of social media moderation.
Social media platforms are under serious pressure to control the spread of misinformation
by governments, by investors, by their own users.
This puts companies in the awkward position of having to be the arbiters of what is and
isn't factual reality and what is and isn't acceptable speech.
Some of those cases are going to be pretty clear-cut. The earth isn't flat, and you can't threaten to kill people, but there's also going to
be a lot of ambiguity. That's where Community Notes comes in.
It's a genius feature that lets ex-delegate responsibility for fact-checking onto its
user base, but also allows the users to build their own consensus as a community in a mostly
polite, democratic manner without top-down censorship.
Community Notes were first added as a US-only feature in January 2021 under the original
name of Birdwatch. It was rebranded and expanded in November 2022, shortly after the site fell under New
Management. The primary goal of the feature is to combat misinformation, both intentional and unintentional,
by crowdsourcing fact-checking through anonymous volunteers.
When normal people encounter a post that lacks context, they get to be mad or misled and
move on, but users approved as Community Notes contributors have a third option, a button
that lets them add an asterisk to any misleading post.
The user will then be asked to specify why they think the post needs a note, whether
it's misleading, inaccurate, outdated, satirical in a way that might go over many people's
heads, etc. The contributor will be encouraged to add a link to a reliable source backing their counterclaim.
Then, that proposed note appears on the Community Notes dashboard of other contributors who
vote on whether or not it's helpful. Users may even decide to write a counterclaim on that proposed Community Note, explaining
why it's inaccurate or irrelevant, and encouraging other contributors to vote against it.
To be clear, and this is actually where it gets interesting, this is not a simple majority
system where whichever note gets the most votes wins.
A note needs to hit a certain threshold of supporting votes, and those votes need to
show a general consensus among contributors who typically disagree with each other.
This encourages contributors to stick to the facts and cite reliable sources when writing
a note. It also makes it a lot harder for a partisan group to dog pile on a post and fact check
it with their own personal opinion. This kind of system is primarily attractive to two kinds of people, people with strong
opinions and nitpickers who like to be right, but it's balanced in such a way to disadvantage
the opinionated and placed nitpickers in the position of kingmaker.
Unfortunately, many rank and file normal people users don't understand how Community
Notes works, which can lead to anger and mistrust of the feature.
People often perceive Community Notes as coming from Twitter, or attribute them personally
to Elon Musk, despite the fact that Musk himself is a frequent recipient of its fact checks.
Others view the voting system as rigged, because they don't trust Twitter as an institution.
Worse, as more and more people see and vote on a note, it might appear and disappear,
as it falls above and below the threshold to be seen by all users, leading to the perception
that a correction has been suspiciously removed by the powers that be.
Likewise, it can be sometimes hard to fact check controversial figures with a passionate
parasocial fanbase who are willing to vote down perfectly reasonable criticisms.
Plus, the contributor panel isn't all that visually distinct from the rest of Twitter,
so some participants will take and post screenshots of sick dunks they've submitted as Community
Notes, leading to the perception that this kind of petty squabbling is what's actually
getting put on people's posts. It's not.
But perhaps the biggest concern with Community Notes is that they demonetize any posts that
they're applied to, with the idea being to disincentivize for-profit disinformation
like celebrity death hoaxes or conspiracy mills.
The problem is that demonetization doesn't take into account why the note was written
in the first place, whether it was a correction, an update, or even just additional context.
But these are mostly minor issues specific to X's implementation of Community Notes.
The deeper question is whether this is a principally good concept that we should try to implement
elsewhere. Pretty much all social media companies use a mixture of algorithmic filtering and user
reports to fly potential problem posts, which are then either automatically hidden or sent
to a human moderator for a manual review.
That last step, however, is often optional. Even with thousands and thousands of moderators working around the clock, there's just
too much content to sift through. This can result in both over and under moderation, as rules get applied unevenly and often without
human oversight. Notable examples include tumblers, notorious crackdown on adult material, which included
a ban on female presenting nipples, and a moderation algorithm so aggressive it would
flag any picture with a large amount of beige or flesh tones as nudity, which is bad news
for fans of doom. So what could happen if we add Community Notes-style consensus mechanisms to this conventional
system? Rather than viewing Community Notes as a full replacement for traditional fact-checking
or social media moderation, it's probably better to think of it as a complementary tool.
One of the advantages of traditional fact-checking is that it's typically coming from an established
authority with a known identity. Users can thus assess the credibility of a correction based on the reputation and relevance
of its source. You might pay attention to Miriam Webster's opinion on the origin of the word Riz, but
you don't necessarily want their opinion on Taylor Swift's love life.
Stay in your lane, Miriam. By contrast, Community Notes consumers are wholly anonymous and might lack any relevant
expertise in the subject they're assessing. The only authority Community Notes has is built onto the public perception that it is
a well-constructed system that creates good results.
It does have its own advantages, however, in that it's a lot faster and has a much
higher capacity than traditional fact-checkers who typically have to focus on the most important
potential inaccuracies. That's why you get a lot of traditional fact-checking for national politicians, but relatively little
fact-checking for local politicians who probably lie just as often.
There's also a known problem where after the fact corrections rarely have the same
virality in reach as the initial incorrect claim, because they're just not nearly as
exciting or interesting. George Clooney got married to his own clone.
Oops, sorry, no he didn't. Community Notes, however, can at least stem the tide of a frequently repeated misconception
because they're directly attached to the post making the original claim and can be easily
spread to copycat posts through the efforts of a few diligent community members.
These corrections are then immediately available to anyone who reads these posts rather than
buried deep in the comments. Community Notes contributors can even magnify information from traditional fact-checking
sources simply by linking to it. We can think of these two systems as being analogous to traditional academic sources
and crowdsource information like Wikipedia. One of them is good enough to go in an essay, while the other is at least good enough for
social media. Community Notes is also a better supplement than a replacement for standard moderation
practices because it creates a middle ground that allows a platform to operate with a gentler
hand rather than always reaching for the band hammer or, more likely on ELOXX, doing nothing.
It's potentially a problem for public discourse when important figures say offensive, inaccurate
or controversial things and those comments are removed rather than preserved and corrected.
It's also a known fact that many good ideas started out controversial, so we should at
least try to be careful about which ideas we say aren't even worth hearing.
Community Notes style fact-checking allows contrarians to at least speak their minds.
There are also clear benefits to a system of user participation that balances the power
of individual contributors rather than allowing them to consolidate power and act as petty
liege lords over their own little subdomains, the way that forum style platforms like Reddit
do. Some of those mods, man. So now, what do you think?
How would you improve a feature like this? What platforms would you add collaborative fact-checking features to?
Should participation be financially incentivized or rewarded?
This is free labor after all. Thanks for watching guys, like, dislike, check out our other videos like this one on whether
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