The very first thing to find out about Neighborhood Notes on Elon Musk‘s tweets: there must be a lot extra of them.
Neighborhood Notes, the Twitter/X fact-checks previously generally known as Birdwatch, are sometimes touted as one of many few good issues to have survived the first chaotic yr of Musk’s possession. These notes are user-generated, normally together with hyperlinks to high-quality sources. Like Reddit posts they dwell or die on upvotes (“useful”) and downvotes (“not useful”) — sufficient of the latter they usually disappear. Anybody can signal as much as contribute, if they do not have strikes in opposition to their account. Contributors are the one ones who get to see or vote on proposed notes earlier than they’re formally stamped on tweets.
Musk will typically tout Neighborhood Notes as an indication that he cares concerning the high quality of knowledge on a service that’s crawling with deliberate disinformation. He is good to take action: one examine has discovered that Neighborhood Notes enhance belief in social media, and so might assist convey X’s fleeing customers again. However he would not even have to put his thumb on the size of the X algorithm to keep away from them himself.
With almost 200 million folks following him, if even a small proportion of his adoring followers are signed as much as charge proposed Neighborhood Notes, they will swarm the system, intercept and charge any proposed notice on Musk’s account as “not useful” earlier than he will get one other badge of fact-checking disgrace. As on this occasion, the place retweeting a false story a couple of bomb at a Trump rally was a step too far even for his followers (the unique tweet Musk quotes was deleted; the Word stays).
This helps Musk considerably. As a result of as any examine of his tweets confirms, the bomb story is not an excessive amount of of an outlier: Musk is spreading misinformation continually. The New York Instances checked out one weeks’ value in September, and located one-third to be “false, deceptive or lacking important context.”
In July, the month Musk endorsed Trump, the Middle for Countering Digital Hate recognized 50 Musk tweets that had been debunked by impartial fact-checkers. Not one in all them obtained Neighborhood Famous, they usually have been seen a complete of 1.2 billion instances.
As issues stand on the unofficial Neighborhood Notes leaderboard, Musk is at #55, with 70 Neighborhood Notes to this point. A number of accounts that he incessantly replies to and retweets are ranked within the prime 10. The highest account has greater than 800 notes — however at a charge of fifty falsehoods a month, Musk would simply have outpaced them if oversight was equal.
So what can we be taught from the 70 fact-checks that did truly get added to Musk’s account? This is your TL;DR.
Musk’s early fibs weren’t that huge a deal.
A mere three of the 70 Neighborhood Notes on Musk tweets have been earlier than the date he introduced that sink in to Twitter in October 2022. That does not inform us an excessive amount of, for the reason that Birdwatch service was soft-launched in January 2021 and solely totally rolled out weeks earlier than Musk arrived.
Nonetheless, we are able to see how minor the corrections have been at first. In his first submit with a Neighborhood Word, Musk claimed his Tesla Roadster was orbiting Mars; it is truly orbiting the solar someplace out in the direction of the asteroid belt (which remains to be fairly a flex). The opposite two pre-Twitter Notes concern EV tax credit and Hyperloop tunnels, which he claims cannot flood. Regarding, to make use of one in all Musk’s favourite phrases, however not an enormous deal.
Elon Musk’s X will now not pay creators based mostly on advertisements however on engagement
In Musk’s first week at Twitter, he racked up 4 extra Notes. However they’re innocent, even useful. A pair level out when Musk is joking, in case it is not clear. He calls Neighborhood Notes “superior”; a Word supplies additional data on the way to be a part of.
Mashable Mild Velocity
Then on Nov 4, 2022, Musk claimed advertisers are “attempting to destroy free speech in America” by fleeing the service. Neighborhood Notes stepped in to level out that advertisers have been involved about Musk’s lax method to safety and misinformation as he gutted these groups. And a brand new extra adversarial type of Musk notice was born.
There are extra Neighborhood Notes on his tech posts than his political posts.
In 2023, Musk would obtain 31 Notes. It is nonetheless his most fact-checked yr. Might 2023 — when Musk launched Ron DeSantis’ marketing campaign on X, and incorrectly claimed DeSantis had set “an all time document for fundraising” — remains to be his most fact-checked month.
However that does not imply he is getting fact-checked on his political statements. Extra Neighborhood Notes seem on his claims concerning the tech and media world, together with various weird assaults on nonprofits (see notes on his tweets concerning the Wikimedia Basis, the Web Archive, and NPR).
Musk is extra weak within the replies.
Of the 70 Neighborhood Notes on Musk tweets, a transparent majority — 40 — are on tweets the place Musk is replying to somebody. That is smart. The X algorithm artificially boosts Musk’s common posts, ensuring that he reveals up in your “For You” tab even when you do not observe him. However the algorithm would not push his replies, so falsehoods there usually tend to obtain upvotes from Neighborhood Word volunteers appearing in good religion.
And what falsehoods they have been! In a reply to his mom, Musk disavowed information of his father’s emerald mine; Neighborhood Notes merely used his personal phrases in opposition to him, digging up a quote acknowledging that his father co-owned the mine. In a reply to a former worker, Musk claims there is no proof that plastics within the atmosphere hurt us; seems there may be. “Why would we’ve got your house deal with?” he asks a verified consumer involved about X doubtlessly doxxing him to the IDF; a Word factors out that verification requires ID with an deal with.
And he cannot let effectively sufficient alone. When one supportive account posts a screenshot proudly proving that X is truthful as a result of “even Elon Musk might be Neighborhood Famous,” Musk replies that the Word within the screenshot “is inaccurate and the group already voted it away.” That earns him one other Neighborhood Word: nope, it is nonetheless there.
Musk loves Neighborhood Notes, besides when he would not.
On seven out of the 70 posts, Musk invited the fact-check himself. Invariably he tags @CommunityNotes on a tweet he needed to cite, and clearly already believed. On the stark assertion he is pushing, he’ll add a fig leaf by asking “is that this true” or “is that this correct?” Almost each time, the notice that outcomes supplies context that Musk has missed.
But Musk hardly ever responds to the fact-check he is invited. The one time he did, he dug in his heels. “Neighborhood Notes is failing right here,” Musk wrote in February after claiming that it was unimaginable to signal right into a Home windows PC with no Microsoft account. No, the Word on this reply said, you are able to do it — it simply requires a workaround that “the common Andy” won’t find out about.
The implication: A tech billionaire who’s been logging into Home windows machines for many years is just not the common Andy.
Nor does this specific tech billionaire get Neighborhood Famous just like the Common Andy would, at the very least to this point. And it would not appear the service will do something in any way to rein in “Darkish MAGA” Musk over the past month earlier than the U.S. elections.
Why? As a result of, like an excellent Neighborhood Word, we ought to notice the restrict of Neighborhood Notes — utilizing clear language and high-quality sources.
This is an intensive debunk of Musk’s repeated declare that “unlawful” immigrants are voting in U.S. elections; none of his posts on this topic have been famous. (Sarcastically, Musk himself could have been at one time an “unlawful” immigrant — you’d suppose the writers of sassy notes would get pleasure from pointing this out.)
This is a debunk of his “you have got stated the precise reality” reply to an antisemitic screed final yr. A tweet so notorious, advertisers fled, and but it was not famous.
This is a debunk of his “voter fraud in Virginia” submit from the final week, additionally not famous.
We might go on, however you get the purpose. If volunteers can not overcome the Musk downvoters to append correctives on this sort of nonsense, there’s little or no he can say earlier than election day that will be fact-checked.
Famous.