Drop a dollar every time you heard news for Twitter starting November of last year. And you’d probably have a few hundred dollars. Yep, that’s how ‘active’ new CEO Elon Musk has been. On that note, Twitter has rolled out another update for Community Notes, with community-contributed contextual pointers now also being shown on quote Tweets in the app.
Take Note
As seen in this example, now, even if a post has been re-shared via the ‘Quote Tweet’ option, any Community Note will still be displayed, ensuring more users get the additional context added by users.
But wait, there’s more – according to the Chief Twit himself, users will soon also be notified whenever anything that they’ve replied to, liked, or re-Tweeted gets a Community Note added. That’ll help to expand awareness, keeping more people informed in the app, which could go some way towards reducing the spread of misinformation in Tweets.
While it’s been in development for two years, Community Notes (formerly ‘Birdwatch’) has emerged as a key element in Musk’s push to make Twitter a more trustworthy source of information, with the tool, in his view, enabling a form of crowd-sourced fact–checking that will then reduce Twitter’s own obligations in regards to moderation and, in some views, censorship.
Musk firmly believes that the users themselves should be the arbiters of truth, not platform management, and Community Notes provides Twitter with a means for users to add their say, as well as additional reference notes to fact-check any claims that may be untrue or unclear in Tweets. This does have some merit – and definitely, any level of friction in the sharing process, particularly when it comes to reTweets, can help to reduce the spread of misinformation in the app.
ReTweeting has been identified as a key amplifier of misinformation because the process makes it incredibly easy to re-distribute content quickly, which many users then do without any level of fact-checking or consideration on their own part. This is particularly true when matched with confirmation bias, which makes people far more likely to reshare information that supports their established views, regardless of the validity. Community Notes supposedly slows this, with even the on-screen display of the note likely causing users to re-think their sharing behavior, and stunning rapid re-distribution of claims across the app.
The Wrap
Again, putting moderation in the hands of users does come with a level of risk. The Community Notes system is improving, and new checking and qualification processes do lessen the chances of it being misused. However, it could still spark debate and dissent, depending on what constitutes acceptable evidence to support claims. Either way, it’s a noteworthy experiment, which, as noted, also aligns with Musk’s ‘Power to the People’ approach.
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