X (formerly Twitter) That changed this week How crowdsourced fact checking community feedback works. In the new design, users will be able to review all notes that have been suggested as captions for Post X, instead of just the one note they are currently reviewing. In other words, it will allow contributors to consider other feedback before leaving their rating – and perhaps convince them to change their minds.
It’s a subtle edit but it can influence Community Feedback contributors to consider different viewpoints, rather than just agreeing with the audience that the note is useful — meaning the note is publicly displayed to X users below the post as a collective fact-check.
X says this change was necessary because “it is important that shareholders receive as much useful information as possible,” when noting the evaluation.
However, it is also a way of putting alternative viewpoints in front of contributors, which may change their thinking or increase confusion about which proposed observations are actually the most useful and most accurate. Feedback on
Even in Example One corrects misinformation in a tweet by pointing out that whales are actually mammals, while the other says the remark is unnecessary because the account is a parody account. Both notes are indeed true – but the latter could encourage Community Note contributors to remove added context from the tweet.
It can become more complicated if the parody narrative is political in nature and statements that “do not need to be corrected” are misinformation that one party is trying to spread. Removing the note in this case, simply because it is a parody account, would have been more harmful if users had not bothered to check the account’s bio as the account revealed its parody nature.
Community Notes first launched as Birdwatch in 2021, before Elon Musk acquired the network formerly known as Twitter. One of the platform’s most innovative features, the system uses an algorithm that seeks consensus among groups where different viewpoints exist before highlighting other users’ collective fact checks. Additionally, community feedback contributors must first demonstrate their ability to rate feedback as helpful or unhelpful and earn points when their rating ends up being consistent with the final decision of the larger community.
The system has continued to be updated under Musk’s ownership, after he recently launched community feedback for videos, among other changes designed to streamline the process and address low-quality contributions.