X community notes: Weapon against fake news or free speech?
Community notes is the moderation tool that Elon Musk has promoted as the way for Twitter users to police the platform now called X for misinformation, but it has disappointed experts and irritated politicians over corrections judged abusive.
Announced early in 2021 -- two years before Musk bought the platform -- under the name Birdwatch, the feature initially allowed volunteers in the United States to signal questionable posts and provide notes with context.
These notes were initially just visible on a separate site, but then under the message themselves.
Twitter had just booted Donald Trump off the platform for inciting violent riots at the US Capitol and was seeking to promote healthier conversations.
In November 2022, a community note prompted the White House to retract a tweet that had exaggerated the impact of President Joe Biden's policies on retirement benefits.
Having become the platform's new owner, Musk relaxed moderation but still said his "goal is to make Twitter the most accurate source of information on Earth, without regard to political affiliation".
The publication of community notes has since been rolled out to 44 countries.
Twitter users who have registered as contributors write propositions for notes and they are not edited by staffers at X. They must nevertheless respect X's moderation rules.
The proposed notes are then submitted to other contributors. Those that get enough votes as being helpful may then be selected by an algorithm to be posted publicly.
The algorithm is inspired by the one Netflix uses to recommend content, and aims to "identify notes with broad appeal across viewpoints" rather than just ones that get the most votes as being helpful.
It is regularly updated, with one announced recently
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