Elon Musk’s takeover of social media platform Twitter was one of the most dramatic events in recent years. Upon assuming control of the platform, Musk made significant changes, including reducing the company’s workforce and eliminating behind-the-scenes moderators. Instead, he emphasized the use of Community Notes to combat misinformation on Twitter. This new approach involved a crowdsourced system for users to flag misleading posts and provide corrective commentary, often with links to reputable sources.
Studies have compared crowdsourced systems to professional fact-checkers and suggested that they can be equally effective in assessing the accuracy of news stories. For instance, a report by physician John Ayers and his team at the University of California, San Diego, found that Community Notes’ corrections about COVID-19 vaccines were almost always accurate and often cited high-quality sources. The research showed that 96% of Community Notes about Covid-19 vaccines were accurate, and the sources cited in these notes were of high quality 87% of the time. It is worth noting that the system may not effectively address hate speech and incitements to violence.
Nevertheless, the crowdsourced anti-misinformation system has demonstrated its value. Ayers pointed out that while only a small number of misleading posts were flagged by Community Notes in his team’s study, the flagged posts were among the most crucial. Overall, Musk’s changes to Twitter’s approach to combatting misinformation seem to have had a positive impact, with the Community Notes system proving effective in addressing the accuracy of news stories and COVID-19 vaccine information.