X is trying to speed up its crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes. The company said in an update that it has “redesigned” its scoring system to power this feature so that user-generated notes appear within 20 minutes of a post being published on the platform.
Introduced in 2022, Community Notes relies on other X users to fact-check or add missing context to posts on the platform. Contributors must cite their sources, and then other users rate the “usefulness” of their notes. Creators will also be penalized for “community-featured” posts to deter attempts to monetize misinformation. Now the whole process will be faster.
According to Mr. The changes could help address long-standing criticisms of crowdsourced fact-checking systems, which say they move too slowly compared to the speed at which misinformation spreads on the platform. For example, a Bloomberg analysis last year found that community notes can take hours to appear on viral tweets, and often only a fraction of users see the fact check compared to the original post. It turned out to be.
New, faster systems could change this, but it’s unclear how often the faster “Lightning” version of the process actually runs. Not all posts containing inaccurate information, false facts, or AI-generated images will be immediately subject to review, if at all. X says the program has more than 800,000 contributors worldwide, but some posts may take longer to go through the community notes process.
