Elon Musk, the owner of X, has made significant changes to the platform’s content moderation rules since taking over in 2022. One of the main initiatives is the Community Notes program, which aims to address misinformation about the election. However, there have been some challenges with this approach.
For example, shortly after President Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for president, false claims about her eligibility to run for office spread rapidly on X. While some users took it upon themselves to correct the misinformation, many posts containing the same false claims went unchecked.
The Community Notes program relies on a group of users to write fact-checking labels and vote on their accuracy. Approved labels are then added to misleading posts by an algorithm. Despite this process, misinformation researchers have found that misleading claims can still circulate on X, even with corrective labels attached.
One of the key issues with the Community Notes program is consistency. In order for a correction to be made, users from various political backgrounds must agree on its accuracy. This means that some divisive topics may not receive the necessary fact checks, leading to unchecked misinformation.
According to MediaWise, a media literacy program, only a small percentage of fact checks drafted on Community Notes have been approved and made public on X. For example, out of nearly 8,000 fact checks about immigration, only 471 have been approved by users. Similarly, only 4 percent of fact checks about abortion have been made visible on the platform.
While X believes that the Community Notes program is sufficient to address misinformation about the upcoming presidential election, there are clear challenges that need to be addressed. As the platform continues to navigate these issues, it will be important to ensure that accurate information is readily available to users across the platform.
