Meta Platforms begins field tests of "Community Notes"

"We expect community notes to be less biased than the independent fact-checking they replace because it allows more people with more points of view to contribute context." So Meta Platforms is looking to justify the move away from professional fact-checkers to annotations created by randomly selected volunteers. These are people who otherwise post themselves and/or support Meta's algorithms by sharing other people's posts, but who generally have no qualifications in fact-checking.

The Community Notes of the microblogging service X are the model for this. Users are supposed to add notes to third-party posts in the meta services Facebook, Instagram and Threads to provide "context". The notes may not be longer than 500 characters and must contain a hyperlink to a resource that supports the comment made. However, Meta does not allow community notes on advertising.

A public field test will begin on March 18 in the USA in six languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Portuguese. The authors of the individual Community Notes will remain Meta's secret for the time being. Outside the USA, Meta will continue to pay professional fact-checkers for selected languages until further notice.

X algorithm decides what runs

According to the information provided, an algorithm that Meta has copied from X decides which Community Notes are published at all. Meta wants to gradually adapt this open source algorithm to its own ideas. The system takes into account the previous history of an annotation author and seeks the approval of others, who usually hold opposing views. "This is not a majority system," Meta emphasizes, "Regardless of how many agree with a community note, it will not be published as long as people who normally disagree decide that the note provides helpful context."

But even if the opinion is unanimous, the Community Notes should never affect the distribution of the original post on Meta's networks. So even dangerous nonsense that all Community Notes authors warn against is not automatically presented to fewer users.

Who may participate

Anyone wishing to post Community Notes must be at least 18 years of age, have a Meta account that is more than six months old without blocks, and have either verified their phone number or activated two-factor authentication. Such users can join a waiting list which, according to Meta, currently contains 200,000 people. From this pool, Meta invites randomly selected people to participate in the field trial.

"We are building this publicly as we learn from contributors and see how this works in practice with our products," says Meta, "We don't expect this process to be perfect." Based on lessons learned, the community notes program will be improved over time. Meta has announced that it will be canceling its fact checkers worldwide and replacing them with free Community Notes from random users.

(ds)