Community Notes: What is Community Notes and how does it differ from content moderation?

Social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced the discontinuation of its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States, replacing it with the Community Notes feature. This new initiative, similar to the one used by Elon Musk-owned X, empowers users to add context to potentially misleading posts. Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, shared the news in a video message on Tuesday.

Shift to Community Notes

Meta explained that the shift to Community Notes was inspired by the success of a similar feature on X. “We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context. People across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see,” the company stated.

The announcement attracted mixed reactions across social media, with notable figures such as Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino responding to the change.

Also Read: Meta adopts X’s Community Notes: what it means for business

What is Community Notes?

Launched in 2021 as Birdwatch, Community Notes allows users to add context to posts that may be misleading, lack important details, or need further explanation. These notes appear below the post, labelled “Readers added context,” and typically include reasoning or a sentence explaining the added note. Users often provide source links to support their claims. Other X users can then vote on whether the context is necessary or should be removed.How Community Notes differs from content moderation

Unlike traditional content moderation, which is often influenced by societal and political pressure, Community Notes allows users to rate other notes before adding their own. This helps create a collective decision on which notes are necessary and which should be removed.

Once users are granted the ability to write notes, they risk losing this privilege if their contributions are rated as ‘unhelpful’ by the community.

Content moderation, on the other hand, has become increasingly complex, often resulting in mistakes that stifle free expression. While these systems are designed with good intentions, they have led to excessive censorship and slow responses, flagging harmless content and unfairly penalising users. This ultimately hinders the goal of fostering open discourse.