Community Notes Under Scrutiny: Failing to Counter Election Misinformation

The crowd-sourced fact-checking feature 'Community Notes' on Elon Musk's X platform is criticized for not effectively countering misinformation about the U.S. election. A report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate reveals that 74% of analyzed misleading posts lacked accurate notes, resulting in 2.2 billion views of uncorrected content.

The fact-checking tool 'Community Notes' on Elon Musk's platform, X, is under fire for failing to adequately address misinformation related to the U.S. election, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Of the 283 misleading posts analyzed by CCDH, 209 lacked corrective notes visible to all users, amassing a staggering 2.2 billion views.

X, which allows users to crowd-source fact-checking through Community Notes, was launched last year to combat misinformation. However, the feature seems insufficient against election-related misinformation, despite a defense from Keith Coleman, X's vice president of product. Coleman stated that thousands of election-related notes have cleared X's quality threshold this year.

Despite these assurances, X remains under scrutiny from multiple governments, including the UK, Australia, and Brazil. These countries have expressed concerns about X's content management practices. X also lost a lawsuit to CCDH earlier, accusing it of mishandling hate speech. Additionally, U.S. states have called on Musk to address misinformation spread by X's AI chatbot.

(With inputs from agencies.)