User:J.pshine5t/Twitter Community Notes

Twitter#Censorship and moderation

Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch)

Logo of Birdwatch, a Twitter program

As part of its means to moderate misinformation, Twitter launched its crowd-sourced Birdwatch program in January 2021 with 1,000 users. In November 2022, at the request of new owner Elon Musk, Birdwatch was rebranded to Community Notes and expanded to Europe and more countries outside of the US. Community Notes started to become widespread on Twitter in 2023. Musk describes Community notes as a "game changer for combating wrong information".

Community Notes users are volunteers with access to a playful interface from which they have the ability to monitor tweets and replies that may include misinformation. In November 2021, Twitter announced an update to the Birdwatch moderation tool, meant to limit the visibility of contributors' identities by creating aliases for their accounts. In March 2022, Twitter expanded access to notes made by the Birdwatch moderators, giving a randomized set of US users the ability to view the notes attached to tweets and rate them.

A Community note is a countermessage providing fact check appearing under a tweet. For a Community note to be published, a Community Note user must first propose a note under a tweet. Users then give their opinion on the usefulness and sincerity of the note. The note can be posted once many users with different points of view "who have disagreed in the past" have agreed on whether or not to publish it. A Community note user gets points if their note is validated.

Since 2023, Community notes are often attached to shared articles missing context, misleading advertisements or political tweets with false arguments. They also note when an image presented as real is actually AI-generated. Similarly to Wikipedia, a source is attached to the note in most cases so the information can be verified. Elon Musk allowed to users to add to Community Notes to adverts, which the Financial Times noted was good for consumers but not for advertisers.

The feature does not mention fact checking but indicates "readers added context", as facts are complex and evolving rather than undisputed and established. Wired has noted Community Notes itself is prone to being fooled by disinformation. Le Monde concluded Community notes were useful, but were not a substitute of conventional moderation.

Studies

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22community+notes%22+twitter&btnG=

including

Future Challenges for Online, Crowdsourced Content Moderation: Evidence from Twitter's Community Notes

The Community Notes Observatory: Can Crowdsourced Fact-Checking be Trusted in Practice?

Community Notes vs. Snoping: How the Crowd Selects Fact-Checking Targets on Social Media

The Roll-Out of Community Notes Did Not Reduce Engagement With Misinformation on Twitter

Limiting Factors in the Effectiveness of Crowd-Sourced Labeling for Combating Misinformation

Diffusion of Community Fact-Checked Misinformation on Twitter

When Partisans Fly: Twitter Community Notes and the Political Economy of Social Media Disinformation