The launch of Meta’s community notes is anticipated in the coming months, following the announcement that the social network will be discontinuing its fact-checking program, as facts are considered so 2015. You can now register to be a contributor through Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the owner of X, seems to be questioning the neutrality of his platform’s community notes, as he has declared intentions to “fix” the feature…
In a time when the truth mattered to users, social media platforms employed professional researchers dedicated to fact-checking claims to curb the spread of false information.
After acquiring X, Musk shifted to a Community Notes model, allowing other users to provide corrections and context to tweets. Recently, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that their social networks would pursue a similar approach.
We are ending the existing third-party fact-checking program in the United States and transitioning to a Community Notes system. We’ve observed this method’s effectiveness on X—where the community can assess potentially misleading posts and determine what context is valuable for users. We believe this could serve our original goal of informing people about the content they encounter, while minimizing bias.
You can apply to participate in the program here.
Elon Musk seems dissatisfied with the community notes being applied to his own posts, and those of users he has retweeted. He particularly took issue with corrections to a claim he made regarding the approval ratings of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Musk inaccurately asserted that Zelensky controlled polling and suggested that the president was refusing to conduct elections during the war, despite Ukraine’s laws stating that fair elections cannot occur under wartime conditions.
It’s worth noting that even Musk’s own Grok AI provided a correction:
The statement claiming Zelensky is “withholding elections” as a tyrannical act is unfounded. The deferral of elections, originally scheduled for March 2024, is dictated by Ukraine’s constitution and the “Martial Law Act” (No. 389-VIII), which forbids elections during a state of emergency—currently imposed due to Russia’s ongoing invasion since February 2022. This choice isn’t solely Zelensky’s but requires parliamentary approval, to be renewed every 90 days.
In response, Musk indicated he would “fix” the fact-checking process.
Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is becoming increasingly manipulated by governments and traditional media outlets.
Efforts are underway to address this…
This statement comes after Musk previously called community notes “awesome.”
Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash
