Elon Musk’s X will begin experimenting with a new way to use Community Notes, its crowdsourcing fact-checking system, to highlight well-liked posts from users with different perspectives. On Thursday, the Community Notes X account announced the launch of a pilot test where select contributors would be able to rate posts by answering questions about why they either like or don’t like that particular post.
The system is similar to how Community Notes fact-checking works. Instead of simply allowing users to upvote or downvote posts for accuracy — something that could be easily gamed if like-minded contributors teamed up to promote their own views — Community Notes uses something called a bridging algorithm. This attempts to find consensus among people who don’t usually share the same views.
If users whose opinions typically differ both agree that a fact-check is accurate, the note is published and made visible to the public. While X’s system has been criticized for being too slow and unable to keep up with the massive amounts of misinformation that circulate on the platform, this same idea has since been adopted by Meta as a replacement for fact-checking.
Now, X intends to see if Community Notes could help identify the best posts, too.
Starting today, the company says that a subset of Community Notes contributors will begin seeing a new callout in the product when a post is gaining attention in the form of Likes. Contributors will then be able to rate and provide feedback about the post, which will inform the algorithm if the post is being well-received by people with different perspectives.
In a post on the Community Notes X account, the company explains the experiment could bring awareness to “what resonates broadly.”
“People often feel the world is divided, yet Community Notes shows people can agree, even on contentious topics. This experimental new feature seeks to uncover ideas, insights, and opinions that bridge perspectives,” the post states. “Following the path we used to develop Community Notes, we’re building in public with a small pilot so that this concept can be shaped by the people. We look forward to learning and iterating with you all as we do with Community Notes every day.”