Elon Musk’s X will start experimenting with a new way to use Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking system, to highlight favorite posts from users with different points of view. On Thursday, the Community Notes X account announced the launch of a pilot test in which individual contributors will be able to rate posts by answering questions about why they like or dislike a particular post.
The system is similar to how fact-checking works in Community Notes. Instead of simply allowing users to vote up or down on posts to verify their credibility – which could easily be played out if like-minded contributors banded together to promote their own views – Community Notes uses what it calls a “bridge-building algorithm.” It tries to find a consensus between people who usually do not have the same views.
If the users, whose opinions usually differ, agree that the fact-checking is accurate, the note is published and becomes visible to the public. Although X’s system has been criticized for being too slow and unable to keep up with the huge amount of disinformation circulating on the platform, the same idea has since been adopted by Meta as a replacement for fact-checking.
Now, X intends to test whether Community Notes can help identify the best posts.
Starting today, the company says that a subset of Community Notes contributors will start to see a new notification in the product when a post attracts attention in the form of “likes.” Contributors will be able to rate the post and leave feedback on it, which will allow the algorithm to understand whether it is well received by people with different views.
In a post on the Community Notes X account, the company explains that this experiment can draw attention to something “that has a broad resonance.”
“People often feel that the world is divided, but Community Notes shows that people can come to an agreement even on controversial issues. This experimental new feature aims to uncover the ideas, views, and opinions that bring points of view together,” the post reads. “Following the path we used to develop Community Notes, we are creating a small pilot project so that this concept can be shaped by people. We look forward to learning and iterating with all of you, just as we do with Community Notes every day.”
