A crowd-sourced verification system used by Elon Musk’s X failed to flag a vast majority of false claims related to the US midterm elections — including those promoted by the billionaire — a study said Wednesday.
Studies have shown Community Notes can work to dispel some falsehoods, like vaccine misinformation, but researchers have long cautioned that it works best for topics where there is broad consensus. Some researchers have also cautioned that Community Notes users can be motivated to target political opponents by partisan beliefs. Tech platforms increasingly view the community-driven model as an alternative to professional fact-checking.
Community Notes, which allows users to contribute notes that add context or corrections to posts, was introduced by X in late 2022 and the same model is increasingly being adopted by other tech platforms. Only 13 of those posts were tagged with Community Notes. NewsGuard, however, said that Musk, who has 241.5 million followers on X, has advanced at least four false claims related to the midterm elections, none of which carried Community Notes.
Musk has often promoted Community Notes, calling it “awesome” and asserting that all users, including himself, were subject to being corrected by the crowd-sourced model.
