Like Them or Hate Them, Community Notes are Here to Stay

Straight to the Point

What we See: The long debate over how to manage misinformation and disinformation on social media is entering a new chapter as companies move away from formal fact-checking and opt instead for user-driven programs like X’s Community Notes.

What It Means: These systems appear to have some promise in terms of their impact and credibility. And though the programs aren’t perfect, the biggest social platforms on the planet seem to be headed in the same direction. It would be wise for companies, especially those uniquely impacted by online misinformation, to recognize where tech companies are going and develop thoughtful and practical strategies to embrace programs like Community Notes.

What to Do About It: Take the time to understand Community Notes and how they work and establish a monitoring and management protocol that is tailored to your business — and the unique challenges you face.

What we See

As the debate continues about the role social media companies can or should play when it comes to correcting or even removing misinformation, it seems many are headed in the direction of replacing official “fact checkers” with democratic, community-based systems where platform users are the ones primarily responsible for correcting false information posted by other users. The leading program of this kind, which we anticipate other platforms will look to emulate, is X’s Community Notes (CNs).

CNs are sourced annotations that appear alongside X posts that contain false information, could be misleading, or could benefit from clarification or additional context. You can read more specifically about how they work at X’s Help Center here but essentially they are written and evaluated by X users who sign up to participate, not by professional fact checkers. CNs that the community agrees are warranted, accurate, well-sourced, and unbiased are attached to the post for all future users to see, and anyone who previously interacted with the post in some way (commented on it, amplified it) are notified that a CN has been attached.

And there are signs that the program could have significant impact on the spread of misinformation:

Research by X has shown that people are 20 – 40% less likely to believe misleading posts when they are accompanied by a CN compared to posts without one.
A Cornell study found that adding a CN to an X post reduces the number of retweets by almost half and increases the probability that the author will delete their original post by 80%, limiting the spread of false claims.

What It Means

Though the Community Notes program still has many kinks — and it doesn’t solve every misinformation-related challenge — it and programs like it have the potential to be game-changers for a company’s ability to address misinformation and protect its reputation because CNs:

are literally attached to the misleading content and deliver notifications to users who previously encountered and engaged with the misinformation. This means companies may not have to spend as much energy, time, and money actively correcting the record with all audiences when a false claim spreads or trying to get them to visit a separate website to “get the facts.”
can be tied not just to a post but to a piece of media — a video, a misleading image or infographic, etc. — so that the CN is visible whenever the content is shared, even if it’s shared by many different people.
are seen as more independent and credible than official “fact checkers” by many people, especially those segments of society who have grown to distrust institutions and traditional media outlets.
are published without named authors, further enhancing their credibility — if a company or their agency writes a CN, its credibility can’t be called into question because of who authored it… because no one will know who did.

For these reasons, we believe all companies — but especially those who are often victims of viral and false social media campaigns — should understand how to use CNs and embrace them as part of their broader strategies aimed at combatting misinformation.

What to Do About It

Now, how do you actually use the program and leverage CNs effectively? Here are some ways to get started:

Learn more about the mechanics: The CN program is not the most straightforward program — you can’t just sign up today and start writing notes. There’s a complex system of impact scores calculated by how often users accurately rate the CNs of others as “helpful” or “not helpful,” how often they write notes of their own and the degree to which those notes are “helpful” or “not helpful,” and a variety of other factors. The X Help Center linked above has more information about how the program works logistically.
Sign up for the program: Likely the best way to learn how the program works practically is to have communicators, digital listening analysts, and of course social media team members at your company sign up for CN and start experimenting with it — reading and rating others’ notes to build up their profiles and eventually earn the ability to write CNs of their own.
Understand what a good CN looks like: Look at others’ CNs that have been approved and attached to posts and start thinking about the notes you’ll write and what the defining features will be — inclusion of reliable, high-quality sources and clear, concise, neutral language that directly addresses the false claim.
Figure out a monitoring protocol and CN approval process that makes sense for you: Set up social listening tools to capture posts with the most common false claims about your company so you can identify misleading posts and add a note as early as possible.

The Purple team has helped some of the world’s most prominent organizations combat misinformation. If you need support protecting your enterprise value, contact us — we are here to help.

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