Twitter has long had a troubled history with misinformation, and the platform attempted to tackle this with a feature called Birdwatch. Elon Musk rebranded this as Community Notes to crowdsource fact checking, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, anti-misinformation organizations around the world have cast doubts on whether or not they are truly as effective as Musk claims.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that just 8.5% of Twitter’s users end up seeing these community notes at any given point in time. The lack of visibility is problematic because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing misinformation to run rampant without any kinds of checks and balances on it.
However, that is mostly due to just 8.5% of all Community Notes being made public. The vast majority of them are not revealed to the average user, thereby making them considerably less effective than might have been the case otherwise.
Twitter claims that it only publicizes notes that have received good ratings from other users. The main issue here is that people of different political beliefs may not be able to come to a consensus about the veracity of a given note.
With partisanship on the rise, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that users will be able to agree on something. The polarization of the political spectrum is showing now signs of abating anytime soon, and Twitter’s users will continue to suffer from misinformation unless swift action is taken.
Twitter is also using a Twitter user’s behavior and utilizing the algorithm to determine what end of the political spectrum they fall on. This is a highly inaccurate method with all things having been considered and taken into account. It is no surprise that 60% of the notes that have received the most ratings never see the light of day, since users were unable to come to a consensus that would’ve helped it determine the truth of whatever is being discussed on the massive online forum.
H/T: Poynter
Read next: Twitter Claims to Have More than Half a Billion Users While Launching New Hiring Platform
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that just 8.5% of Twitter’s users end up seeing these community notes at any given point in time. The lack of visibility is problematic because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing misinformation to run rampant without any kinds of checks and balances on it.
However, that is mostly due to just 8.5% of all Community Notes being made public. The vast majority of them are not revealed to the average user, thereby making them considerably less effective than might have been the case otherwise.
Twitter claims that it only publicizes notes that have received good ratings from other users. The main issue here is that people of different political beliefs may not be able to come to a consensus about the veracity of a given note.
With partisanship on the rise, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that users will be able to agree on something. The polarization of the political spectrum is showing now signs of abating anytime soon, and Twitter’s users will continue to suffer from misinformation unless swift action is taken.
Twitter is also using a Twitter user’s behavior and utilizing the algorithm to determine what end of the political spectrum they fall on. This is a highly inaccurate method with all things having been considered and taken into account. It is no surprise that 60% of the notes that have received the most ratings never see the light of day, since users were unable to come to a consensus that would’ve helped it determine the truth of whatever is being discussed on the massive online forum.
H/T: Poynter
Read next: Twitter Claims to Have More than Half a Billion Users While Launching New Hiring Platform
