X Community Notes ‘failed’ to flag US election falsehoods, study says

A study has found that X Community Notes, a crowdsourced verification system used by Elon Musk's social media platform X, failed to identify the majority of false claims made during the US midterm elections. Introduced in late 2022, this community-driven model has since been adopted by other tech platforms. However, researchers have consistently raised doubts about its ability to combat misinformation effectively.

According to NewsGuard, a US watchdog organization, only 13 out of the dozens of posts on X that spread false claims about the elections were tagged with Community Notes. The uncorrected posts garnered millions of interactions prior to the Nov 3 midterm elections. Some of the false claims included a misleading statement by a conservative commentator alleging that New York and California had banned voters from showing and officials from asking for their voter IDs.

Despite Musk's enthusiastic promotion of Community Notes, praising it as "awesome" and asserting that all users, including himself, are subject to corrections from the model, the system failed to catch at least four false claims related to the midterm elections. NewsGuard's research suggests that while Community Notes can be effective in dispelling some falsehoods, such as vaccine misinformation, it works best when there is a clear consensus on the issue.

Some researchers have also warned that Community Notes users might be motivated to target political opponents due to their partisan beliefs.

Tech platforms have increasingly viewed community-driven models like Community Notes as an alternative to professional fact-checking. Last year, Meta ended its third-party fact-checking program in the United States, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg claiming it led to "too much censorship." However, professional fact-checkers firmly reject this assertion.

Meta has recently begun testing its own version of Community Notes in 16 Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, signaling a potential shift towards replacing its fact-checking program. However, Meta's Oversight Board, a quasi-independent body funded by the company to review its moderation decisions, maintains that Community Notes is not a suitable replacement for professional fact-checking.