Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
On Tuesday, Jan 7, 2025, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the company’s decision to terminate its third-party fact-checking programme, starting in the United States. Before this discontinuation, Meta had been using the services of independent fact-checking organisations to moderate content on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Under this project, Meta partnered with fact-checking organisations like DUBAWA to identify potentially untrue information across its platforms, conduct fact-checks, and report such content. This made it easier for Meta to flag misleading or false posts.
Meta announced that it would replace fact-checkers with a community notes system after discontinuing the project. In place of traditional fact-checkers, this new approach would allow users to provide context under posts that may contain false or misleading narratives. That is then used to flag what content is true or false.
While community notes are not a strange feature to X users, they may be new to some users of Meta’s products. Here are six key questions that will help you understand this tool better, along with some relatable explanations.
1. What is the purpose of community notes?
According to X, Reddit, and Wikipedia, which have already adopted this user-generated content moderation model, the purpose of community notes is to fight misinformation. On X, this tool lets users add clarifying notes to tweets that might be misleading or incorrect.
Imagine you see a tweet claiming your favourite celebrity did something outrageous without any proof. With community notes, someone can step in and provide the facts or context needed to set the record straight. This way, everyone gets access to better information and can make more informed decisions.
However, despite the use of community notes on X, misleading or false information is still shared on a daily basis.
2. Who can contribute to community notes?
Whether it’s a casual user or an expert on a topic, Notes lets anyone add their voice to a conversation. In other words, if you spot a post that seems off, you can write a note to help clarify things. Think of it as being in a group project where everyone pitches in their knowledge to improve the final product. This open participation encourages different viewpoints and makes discussions richer and more informative.
Apart from being trained professionals, fact-checkers often interview experts and deploy technological tools when verifying information. The downside of community notes is that users with little to no knowledge about a subject matter are also allowed to determine what information the public considers true or false.
3. How are contributions currently evaluated?
One way platforms like X attempt to manage community notes is by allowing other users to upvote or downvote notes based on how useful they think they are. If you find a note helpful, you can give it an upvote. If it doesn’t add much value, you can as well downvote it. This system helps highlight the best contributions so that when you’re scrolling through tweets, you can easily spot the most reliable information.
Whether this evaluation method is effective or not might be another question to ask.
4. How do users access Notes?
On X, once a note gets enough votes from the community, it becomes visible right below the original tweet. This means if you see something questionable pop up in your feed, you can quickly check for any notes that clarify or correct it.
5. What are the benefits of Notes?
According to its developers, community notes’ goal is to foster a sense of involvement and trust among users and enhance critical thinking skills. However, apart from being a political move, Zuckerberg sees the adoption of community notes as a way to ensure more freedom of speech.
6. Does community notes have any limitations?
Several individuals have argued that community notes has several limitations that affect its effectiveness in addressing misinformation. According to Alex Mahadevan, the MediaWise Director at the Poynter Institute, one major issue is that around 60 per cent of the most-rated notes never become public, meaning many crucial clarifications go unseen.
Additionally, for a note to be displayed, it must achieve consensus across the political spectrum, which is challenging in today’s polarised environment. This often leaves important notes unpublished. The delay in publishing notes also hinders timely responses to misinformation, limiting the overall impact of the feature.