Toxic X users sabotage Community Notes that could derail disinfo, report says
Ars Technica 2024-10-31
What's the point of recruiting hundreds of thousands of X users to fact-check misleading posts before they go viral if those users' accurate Community Notes are never displayed?
That's the question the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is asking after digging through a million notes in a public X dataset to find out how many misleading claims spreading widely on X about the US election weren't quickly fact-checked.
In a report, the CCDH flagged 283 misleading X posts fueling election disinformation spread this year that never displayed a Community Note. Of these, 74 percent were found to have accurate notes proposed but ultimately never displayed—apparently due to toxic X users gaming Community Notes to hide information they politically disagree with.