Meta replaced professional fact-checkers with a user-driven community notes system to combat misinformation, but initial testing shows it has a very low success rate in publishing helpful notes, raising concerns about its effectiveness in fighting falsehoods on social media.
Elon Musk publicly argued with X's Community Notes feature after sharing a post about his new laptop requiring a Microsoft account, which was fact-checked by a Community Note. Musk criticized the feature, claiming it was failing, and received another note in response. The fact-checking tool, which aims to provide context to potentially misleading posts, relies on crowdsourcing and has visibility issues, with approved notes often only seen by a small number of users.
Verified accounts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, have been spreading misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict. ProPublica and Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism investigated over 200 misleading claims and identified 2,000 tweets by verified accounts that perpetuated them. These false posts, collectively viewed half a billion times, included manipulated media and out-of-context footage. Despite X's fact-checking system, Community Notes, many of these posts went unannotated or received limited visibility. Critics argue that changes implemented by X owner Elon Musk, including reducing the trust and safety team and expanding Community Notes, have led to a proliferation of misinformation and hate speech on the platform.
Elon Musk jokingly offered to give $1 billion to Wikipedia if the site changed its name to "Dickipedia." Musk criticized Wikipedia and its parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, questioning their need for frequent donation appeals. He highlighted the hierarchical nature of Wikipedia and compared it to his social media platform's information correction function called "Community Notes," which relies on user submissions and votes. Musk emphasized the open-source nature of Community Notes and its ability to prevent biased editing.