Elon Musk-owned X streamlines its crowdsourced fact-checking feature Community Notes
X, the company formerly known as Twitter and now owned by Elon Musk, is making changes to its crowdsourced fact-checking feature called Community Notes. After three years of development, the company has decided to remove detailed explanations about how Community Notes work for experienced users.
In a post by X employee Lucas Neumann, he explains that as users become familiar with the feature, the company will streamline it and remove the extra context. However, detailed explanations will continue to appear for new users of Community Notes.
According to Neumann, the decision to provide more text initially was based on research that found it helped users perceive the notes as friendly, helpful, fair, and trustworthy. It also helped them understand that the notes came from the community, not from company employees. With the feature maturing and gaining trust, the company can now start refining it and showing streamlined versions to those with more experience.
The change in Community Notes reflects the growing understanding among X’s user base of how the crowdsourced fact-checking process works. The feature, previously known as Birdwatch, was launched to Twitter’s global users in December 2022 and has been refined over the years to prevent the spread of misinformation.
This system uses a “bridging” algorithm to find consensus among people with different views, instead of relying on upvotes or downvotes. Users who want to contribute to Community Notes must prove their capability by correctly assessing other notes as helpful or not helpful. Once they become contributors, they need to continue adding quality contributions to maintain their status.
It is important to note that Community Notes cannot be edited or modified by X’s team members and do not represent the company’s official viewpoint.
Elon Musk has been a strong advocate for Community Notes, believing it is a gamechanger for improving accuracy on Twitter. As X continues to streamline its operations and focus on Community Notes, it becomes evident that this feature is a priority for the company.
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Elon Musk-owned X, formerly known as Twitter, is streamlining its crowdsourced fact-checking feature Community Notes. The company will remove detailed explanations about how the feature works for experienced users. However, new users will still receive detailed explanations. Read more here.
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What are your thoughts on X’s decision to streamline Community Notes for experienced users? Do you think this change will enhance user experience? Share your opinions in the comments below!
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