Commentary: Elon Musk’s Community Notes feature on X is working

, the social media company got rid of many of its behind-the-scenes moderators, slashed the system whereby users could flag tweets for review, and ramped up a different system to fight misinformation - a form of crowdsourcing called Community Notes.

But the lead author of this new study, behavioural scientist John Ayers of University of California, San Diego, said the data on Community Notes were easy to obtain. And for hashing out factual issues in areas such as science and health, social scientists have recommended a crowdsourcing approach, citing studies demonstrating the power of collective intelligence.

The old system relied on fact-checkers whose identity and scientific credentials were unknown. They could take down posts they deemed to be misinformation, ban users, or use the more underhanded technique of “shadow bans” by which users’ post were hidden without their knowledge. While only a small fraction of misleading posts were flagged, those that did get notes attached were among the most viral, said lead author Ayers.Psychologist Sacha Altay, who was not involved in the new research, said people tend to underestimate the power of collective intelligence, which has proven surprisingly good for forecasting and assessing information - as long as enough people participate.

During the pandemic, fact checkers and moderators labelled lots of subjective statements as misinformation, especially those judging various activities to be “safe”. But another possibility is that lack of trust is the real problem - people lose trust in health authorities or can’t find the information they want, and that causes them to seek out fringe sources. If that’s the case, censorship could create more distrust by stifling open discussion about important topics.

Elon Musk Misinformation

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