X uses ‘robustness update’ to improve its flawed Community Notes system
Under a great deal of political pressure to do so, many social media platforms have opted to move away from using fact checking services. X and Facebook are among those to have adopted a “community notes” system that relies on crowd sourcing rather than third party companies.
Such systems have faced criticism because of the potential for manipulation, but these risks have been downplayed by social media firms. But now X has decided to take steps to improve its own Community Notes system to help detect suspicious activity that could be indicative of manipulation attempts.
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Rolled out with little fanfare, X issued what it has called a Robustness Update to Community Notes. In an entry on the Community Notes Guide pages, the company says that it has “expand[ed] mechanisms included in post selection similarity”.
What does this mean? A post on X gives a little more detail:
We’ve extended Community Notes ability to detect coordinating contributors with additional features targeting coordination between note writers and raters. When the scoring algo detects anomalous correlations in ratings, it automatically prevents those ratings from contributing to notes achieving helpful status.
The post goes on to explain that:
Unlike systems that might shadow ban or use private data, this system follows Community Notes principles and works entirely on open and public data with open and public effects.
Whether these changes have any noticeable impact remains to be seen, but there will almost certainly be further complaints from fans and critics of Community Notes alike.
Image credit: Tatsiana Kuryanovich / Dreamstime.com