Meta extends "Community Notes" test to include ratings and notifications

Meta Platforms is adding new functions to the “Community Notes” tests on its platforms. Users who feel called upon to be unpaid fact-checkers of posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads can now be rated for their context on controversial posts. In addition, all users can request such context for questionable posts. The fact that users are notified when they have interacted with a post and it receives a Community Note should be helpful for the dissemination of corrective comments.

At the beginning of this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his intention to “return to the roots of free speech on Facebook and Instagram.” Following the example of X, which introduced Community Notes after Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter in 2021, fact-checking professionals were to be replaced by comments from other users. Field tests of Community Notes began at Meta Platforms in mid-March.

Meta's Community Notes still being tested

So far, this program is still in the test phase, confirms Guy Rosen at X. He is Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Meta and announced the expansion of Community Notes with the new functions. At the same time, Rosen explains that more than 70,000 users have contributed over 15,000 Community Notes, of which only 6 percent have been published. However, this is only a fraction of the total number of contributions and users. In March alone, 3.43 billion people accessed Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, or WhatsApp at least once, as Meta Platforms proclaimed on the occasion of the latest quarterly figures.

At the beginning of April, Meta ended its fact-checking in the US and thus also the action against the spread of false information on its platforms. In the United States, users are supposed to use community notes to correct controversial posts. Currently, Meta Platforms only accepts applications from users who want to contribute Community Notes from people who are at least 18 years old, live in the US, and have been registered with one of the social networks for at least six months.

Community Notes system too slow

The company uses an example to explain how the system recognizes Community Notes as particularly helpful based on the ratings that have now been introduced. If a user rates numerous comments as unhelpful in contrast to others, this indicates a different opinion. However, if this user then rates an otherwise equally popular community note as helpful, this makes this note particularly valuable. On this basis, the system decides which Community Note is published.

However, this is one of the problems with Community Notes. The non-profit “Center for Democracy & Technology” (CDT), which campaigns for digital rights in the USA, has found that corrections do not spread as widely as the original contributions. False information is shared virally before it can be corrected by users. Especially as the community notes still have to be evaluated several times by users before the system publishes them at all. The CDT refers to a study that found that more than 70 percent of correcting Community Notes on false information about the last US election were not even shown to users.

(fds)