Feb 25, 2025 19:35:00

A survey of 1.2 million posts reveals that expert fact-checking is what's most useful about X's community notes

Following CEO Mark Zuckerberg's declaration that 'we will return to the origin of freedom of expression,' Meta

has stopped fact-checking by independent organizations, which it had done on Facebook, and has moved to the community note format adopted by X (formerly Twitter) . However, when the Spanish fact-checking site Maldita investigated the X community note that Meta aimed for, it became clear that an important part of the community note was fact-checking by experts.

Faster, trusted, and more useful: The Impact of Fact-Checkers in X's Community Notes
(PDF file) https://files.maldita.es/maldita/uploads/2025/02/maldita_informe_community_notes_2024.pdf

Fact-checkers are among the top sources for X's Community Notes, study reveals - Poynter
https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/2025/fact-checkers-contribute-improve-community-notes-x/

Maldita analyzed approximately 1.2 million community notes made on X in 2024. They found that the top three 'most cited sources' were all professional fact-checkers. Other sources included other posts on X and Wikipedia.

The survey also found that users tend to rely on the International Fact-Checking Network, an international fact-checking organization, and accredited organizations of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network.

Carlos Hernández Echevarria, the report's lead author, called it 'an incredible show of trust by X users' in a world where X's owner, Elon Musk, has 'tried every means to destroy our credibility.'

Research also shows that 'crowdsourced fact-checking cannot be effective without professional fact-checking organizations' and that in parallel 'professional, methodological and standardized cooperation is essential,' Hernández Echevarria said.

About 8.3% of community notes are visible to users. Of those that include links to verification organizations, 15.2% are visible. Regarding this situation, Lucas Graves of the University of Wisconsin, who is an expert on fact-checking, pointed out that the specification of community notes, which 'only makes them public if there is a consensus between users with different political views,' weakens the power of notes to display accurate information when needed.

By the way, according to Hernández-Echevarria, notes containing evidence from fact checkers are published 90 minutes faster than regular notes, giving them a greater opportunity to be seen before misinformation spreads.