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Elon Musk’s fact-checking function fails to address US election disinformation, report finds
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Elon Musk’s fact-checking function fails to address US election disinformation, report finds

X’s fact-checking feature, called Community Notes, doesn’t address the flood of misinformation surrounding the US election. Elon Musk’s social media platformaccording to a report released Wednesday by a group that monitors online speech.

The nonprofit Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH) analyzed the Community Notes feature and found that the correct notes correcting false and misleading claims about the US election did not appear on 209 of a sample of 283 posts deemed misleading β€” or 74 percent.

The misleading posts that didn’t show Community Notes even when they were available included false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that voting systems were untrustworthy, CCDH said.

In cases where community notes were displayed, the original misleading posts received 13 times more views than their accompanying notes, the group added.

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Community Notes allows X users write fact checks on posts after users are accepted as contributors to the program.

The reviews are then rated by other users based on their accuracy, sources, how easy they are to understand and whether they use neutral language.

The feature was launched in 2021 by the previous management of the site – then known as Twitter – and was called Birdwatch. Musk renamed it Community Notes after taking over the site in 2022.

Last year, X sued CCDH, accusing the group of losing “tens of millions of dollars” in advertising revenue after it documented an increase in hate speech on the site. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge in March.

Keith Coleman, a vice president of product at X who oversees Community Notes, said in a statement that it “maintains a high standard for making notes effective and maintaining trust across perspectives, and thousands of election and policy-related notes they removed this bar in 2024”.

β€œIn the last month alone, hundreds of such notes have been displayed on thousands of posts and have been viewed tens of millions of times. It is because of their quality that the grades are so effective.”

X, based in San Francisco it also pointed to external academic research that has shown community grades to be trustworthy and effective.

CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said, however, that the group’s research “suggests that X’s community notes are little more than an aid to a flood of hate and misinformation that undermines our democracy and further polarizes our communities.” .