It’s unclear whether Community Notes will truly serve as the misinformation-fighting tool that Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta safety team are promoting.
Meta is now allowing users to sign up as contributors to its upcoming Community Notes program, which will replace official third-party fact-checking. However, a new study by Spanish fact-checking site Maldita suggests that Community Notes on X heavily rely on the same sources that Meta has been using for its third-party fact-checking process.
As reported by Poynter:
“The study ranked professional fact-checkers among the three most cited sources on Community Notes […] The study also found that users trust notes citing an accredited organization more, helping them appear faster on misleading posts and allowing misinformation to be addressed before it spreads further.”
So, Community Notes on X appear to be more effective when they reference professional fact-checking sources, which seemingly contradicts Meta’s decision to eliminate these as official fact-checking partners.
At the same time, Meta could argue that the report proves it doesn’t need formal agreements with these organizations, as users naturally cite them regardless.
However, what stood out to me most in this report was a more concerning issue regarding Community Notes as a tool for combating misinformation:
“Despite the higher trust in community notes citing fact checks, 85% of notes remain invisible to users on X. On average, only 8.3% of proposed notes become visible, rising to as much as 15.2% when linked to a verification organization.”
The vast majority of Community Notes are never displayed, despite contributors having to go through an approval process to ensure they are credible participants.
So why aren’t most Notes visible to X users?
“The reason for the low visibility rate is that Community Notes requires agreement among users with different political views before a note is shown. Maldita’s study recommends that platforms revise this approach or, in Meta’s case, adopt a lower threshold of agreement to prioritize factual accuracy.”
This is the biggest flaw in the Community Notes system—it requires consensus from users with opposing political perspectives before a note is made visible.
The reasoning behind this policy is understandable. If every submitted note were accepted without scrutiny, political activists could exploit the system to suppress opposing viewpoints.
