X Adds Recent Community Notes Navigation Module to Increase Awareness of Disputed Claims

While it’s unlikely to be the moderation solution that Elon Musk seems to portray, X continues to develop its Community Notes contextual information feature, which enables X users which are approved contributors to this system so as to add additional explainers and reference points to any post within the app, helping to enhance understanding, and limit the spread of misinformation.

Over the past week, X has added expanded note exposure to maximise response, and notifications for when a note that a user’s created gets deleted. And now, it’s making it easier for users to seek out notes, with a brand new Community Notes module for X Premium subscribers.

That’ll further boost notes exposure, by enabling users to see more notes which were added, helping to dispel false information before it may well gain any traction.

And as X notes, it’s also developing the identical listings for non-paying users as well, which is able to make it much easier to see which notes have been added, and what subjects are getting essentially the most focus from the Community Notes team at any given time.

It’s a superb update, for what, typically, is a superb system, that helps to maintain users more informed about questionable claims and content within the app.

Though there are flaws in the method, which see many Community Notes failing to achieve public view on a number of the most divisive topics.

Recent evaluation conducted by Poynter Institute found that the overwhelming majority of the Community Notes are never actually seen by users within the app, resulting from the way in which through which the Community Notes review system is structured, which requires consensus from users of opposing perspectives with a view to be displayed.

As explained by Poynter’s Alex Mahadevan:

“Essentially, [Community Notes] requires a cross-ideological agreement on truth, and in an increasingly partisan environment, achieving that consensus is sort of inconceivable.”

X determines a Notes contributor’s political leaning based on past behavior within the app, and the system then requires responses from either side with a view to approve a note.

Poynter’s evaluation suggests that this approach is helpful for highlighting “low-stakes” content, like clarifying satire, or highlighting AI-generated image, things that everyone is mostly in agreement on. But a number of the most harmful misinformation, along more divisive lines (e.g. COVID vaccine impacts, election interference, gender debate), is unikely to get the required consensus.

Thus, the vast majority of Community Notes, where they’re most needed, are usually not being displayed.

Possibly that’s by design, and possibly Musk and his team don’t see this as a serious concern, as a number of the more contentious debates are what X is all about, giving all people, of all persuasions, the chance to share their thoughts. And if there’s no definitive agreement on what’s right or incorrect, that would actually be a superb thing in helping to spark more debate and conversation, and possibly, through such, we could actually come to a more enlightened view by seeing things from different perspectives.

That’s the optimistic view of social media, but evidence has shown that this is just not how things work, and relatively than change into more accepting, exposure to perspectives that differ from our own actually further entrench our previously held beliefs.

And when you furthermore mght think about confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, you may see how a number of the worst sorts of misinformation actually stems from these debates. Which can be where Community Notes may very well be particularly helpful, yet if we are able to’t agree on what the true facts even are in such cases, I assume it’s probably working because it should.

Does that make it a superb solution? X has reduced its reliance on internal moderation because of this, since it desires to allow users to come to a decision what’s true and what’s not, and avoid making its own calls on the identical. That’s why Elon Musk keeps complaining about government interference, or attempted censorship based on political requests, because his belief is that everybody should have the ability to view and listen to all of the data available, and judge for themselves.

The issue is, that gives a leg-up to those that will blatantly mislead profit their very own agenda, because it allows such claims to get broad reach, often without being checked.

For instance, Donald Trump claims to have won the last election. Many on the proper will reinforce this, while those on the left will point to the recorded results.

Does that enable Community Notes agreement?

Expand the identical to climate change, COVID, the war in Ukraine. There’s a complete range of divisive topics on which X is probably going hosting a bunch of false claims, facilitating broad exposure, that are usually not getting “Community Noted” resulting from lack of consensus.

Possibly, that’s the way it must be, nevertheless it does appear to be there are some flaws that would change into more significant within the incorrect circumstances.