Elon Musk’s platform, X, has introduced a new feature called Community Note Request to help address problematic posts. This feature allows eligible users to request fact-checking on posts by clicking on the “•••” menu on any X post on the web. If X receives five or more requests within 24 hours of a post going live, a Community Note will be added.
To be eligible to request Community Notes, users must have verified phone numbers and are limited to five requests a day to prevent spam. The goal of this feature is to provide accurate and high-quality information to help inform people’s understanding of the subject matter in posts.
X partners with professional reviewers from the Associated Press and Reuters to ensure the accuracy of the notes. The platform also monitors whether notes marked helpful by top writers align with what general X users find valuable. The goal is to have notes that are perceived as helpful by a wide range of people and not just one viewpoint.
During the pilot phase, half of the top contributors will be able to request notes to evaluate the benefits of having both the ability to write and request notes. The criteria for requesting notes have been intentionally designed to be simple initially, with the expectation that they will evolve to ensure valuable requests and reduce noise.
While it may be challenging to determine the effectiveness of Community Notes, data from a 2022 survey conducted by X (formerly Twitter) showed that users were 20-40% less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading tweet when accompanied by a note. Additionally, people on Twitter who saw notes were 15-35% less likely to like or retweet a tweet compared to those who saw the tweet alone.
Overall, the introduction of the Community Note Request feature by X aims to improve the quality of information shared on the platform and help users make more informed decisions when engaging with posts. As the pilot phase progresses, X will continue to refine the criteria for requesting notes to ensure that they are valuable and beneficial to contributors.