Twitter’s Community Notes: What I saw when I joined Elon Musk’s supposed truth army.

Two months ago, Elon Musk sat down for an interview at the Tesla Gigafactory in Texas, where CNBC’s David Faber asked him about free speech, among other topics. These tweets include his controversial post comparing billionaire George Soros with X-Men villain Magneto; a screenshot he posted of a graphic that misattributes a quote from a neo-Nazi figure to the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire; and, ironically enough, his quote tweet of a user’s claim that “CNN seems to hate that Twitter community notes works much better in a free speech environment than anything they have ever done.” Participants are granted the option to “Rate proposed Community Notes.” With a click, they can see what other users have suggested, whether it’s offering more information on a particular tweet or explaining why they think added context isn’t needed. pic.twitter.com/dyMHgawLUl — Community Notes June 2, 2021 On Oct. 6—just a couple of days after Elon Musk confirmed he’d go through with his purchase of Twitter, after fighting the deal most of the year—Coleman wrote that “Helpful” Birdwatch notes would be visible to all U.S. users on tweets they were applied to, with additional written information and linked sources ready for public consumption and contextualizing. However, Mahadevan also noticed that a full 25 percent of public notes deemed “Helpful” pre-Musk were disappeared into Birdwatch-exclusive “Needs More Ratings” limbo—including one adding context to a Musk tweet about “appeas” supposedly ungrateful activists who were pressuring advertisers to leave Twitter and, thus, “trying to destroy free speech in America.” In response to Mahadevan’s thread, Musk tweeted that Birdwatch would soon be renamed “Community Notes” and had “incredible potential for improving information accuracy on Twitter!” Community Notes’ value to Musk wasn’t just in its potential utility for inviting advertisers concerned about accurate information on Twitter, but in its ability to cut costs: an entirely volunteer-run army of amateur fact-checkers to replace the paid content moderators to whom he’d shown the door. I’m then taken to a feed that resembles Twitter’s homepage, except that it lists obscured and public notes arranged under three different tabs: “Needs your help,” which displays “notes chosen for you” on tweets that “need a more diverse range of feedback” and where my “point of view could help decide if they’re helpful”; “New,” which showcases “the most recently written notes” for which we can provide feedback; and “Rated helpful,” which shows Notes made available to public view that recently “have been rated helpful by contributors of multiple perspectives,” and that I can further rate as “Helpful,” “Somewhat Helpful,” or “Not Helpful.” This portal also includes a component declaring the “Community Notes values”: “Contribute to build understanding,” “Act in good faith,” and “Be helpful, even to those who disagree.” A page from the official Community Notes Guide spells these values out: It’s “not a place for quick dunks, personal opinions, or insults” where people should “game the system” and use “hateful, derogatory, or inflammatory language.” Rather it’s an arena where users should “write clear, evidence-based notes to help everyone, even skeptics, better understand a Tweet and why it might be misleading,” where the chosen ones should “genuinely and constructively contribute … in a way that even those who may disagree with you might find helpful and respectful.” The alias I chose for myself as a Community Notetaker is “Ecstatic Tree Robin.” As of this week, I have a Rating Impact of 13, thanks to 11 of my ratings that “helped a note earn the status of Helpful,” along with two ratings that “helped a note reach the status of Not Helpful.” As of this writing, I do have 125 pending ratings on “notes that don’t currently have a status of Helpful or Not Helpful,” along with 24 other ratings “made after a status was reached,” without any additional effect on those Notes as of yet.