Twitter’s Community Notes may sound nice in theory, but with the current botched implementation it’s just another vector to spread misinformation, now labeled as “context” and made harder to disregard.
Of course, Birdwatch existed since before Musk, so I don’t blame him for inventing it, only for pushing ahead with it.
What Musk could’ve done is apply the same algorithm (that Twitter now uses to choose which community note to show) to sorting replies. Of course, that would defeat the point of blueticks paying 8 bucks to get on top of replies, and Musk wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on now that the big advertisers left.
The original note (see screenshot at https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/5080048) was up for a while as trending tweet gathered 1-2 million views by users worldwide who saw “context” and were trained to assume it’s the truth (it’s context, after all; it’s the meta above the facts).
Since the algorithm for which note to show is more or less a popularity contest, whoever has the most bots wins, and it took a while until people managed to correct the note. But of course the way Twitter notes work, there is no evidence of this controversy and attempted misinformation, or how many people exactly saw the false “context”.
How many notes like that can you honestly estimate you have seen and just automatically believed? For me, the answer is “no idea”. (Note that if the note agreed with your preexisting opinion it doesn’t make it true.)
I theorize it's still way better than the biased "fact checkers" from institutions.
How many more millions of viewers were lied to re: COVID vaccine safety when the doctors and scientists were outright silenced and replaced with one-sided propaganda?
And so many other topics.
At least now people can continually fact check and expose the bias to a greater degree.
No average person fact-checks context. You did not answer my question; did you trust these community notes before? Do you know how many were false without you realizing? Especially if you agreed with them?
People could continually fact check tweets without false notes masquerading as “context”, that is why I said Twitter could just use the same algorithm for sorting replies in the first place.
Community notes are not more trustworthy than tweets, but they are painted to be. This makes them a valuable target for misinformation campaigns.
Community Notes are not about whether you trust them or not.
They're just notes, usually with links to contrary/correcting evidence.
I can vote to agree after reviewing the evidence, or disagree and specify why.
You know there's AI and algorithms that moderate these things? You can't just go crazy and doing some community note disinformation campaign all over the place.
Fact-checking companies don't even allow for disagreement.
Twitter’s Community Notes may sound nice in theory, but with the current botched implementation it’s just another vector to spread misinformation, now labeled as “context” and made harder to disregard.
Of course, Birdwatch existed since before Musk, so I don’t blame him for inventing it, only for pushing ahead with it.
What Musk could’ve done is apply the same algorithm (that Twitter now uses to choose which community note to show) to sorting replies. Of course, that would defeat the point of blueticks paying 8 bucks to get on top of replies, and Musk wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on now that the big advertisers left.