Community Notes Is Great Until It Challenges Elon, And Then It’s Being ‘Manipulated’ By State Actors
Oh Elon. As we've discussed, Elon is infatuated with Community Notes as a sort of crowdsourced alternative to actually funding a trust & safety staff and tooling. And while we actually like Community Notes and think more social media should use similar tools, it's simply not a full trust & safety replacement.
But, over the past year, we've seen that Elon loves to point out when Community Notes supports his priors, and repeatedly claims victory when Community Notes debunks (or even quibbles with) content that Musk doesn't like. If you look, you can find him cheering on Community Notes time and time again.
Not too long ago, ExTwitter changed the terms of its creator payout system such that creators who regularly get fact-checked via Community Notes will no longer get payouts.
But... how does the man in charge feel about things when he gets fact checked via Community Notes? Well, it appears that his tune quickly changes. While there have been a few times he's been Community Noted in the past, and he'll sometimes brush it off with a yes, even I'm open to having such notes placed on my account," when it's a higher profile thing he seems to freak out.
Over the weekend, Tucker Carlson started pushing a very misleading story regarding YouTube sensationalist Gonzalo Lira who made his name as one of those jackass dating coaches," (i.e., pickup artists") who became a pro-Russia propagandist once the invasion of Ukraine began. Carlson's version of the story pitched Lira as a journalist" who was imprisoned in Ukraine" for criticizing Zelensky."
Lira was arrested earlier this year for violations of Ukraine's criminal code. There are many legitimate questions that can be asked regarding the nature of Ukraine's laws regarding propaganda and free speech. But, the underlying accusations against Lira seem more focused on how he was revealing the identity and location of both Ukrainian soldiers and western journalists covering the war.
Either way, Musk picked up on Carlson's story, falsely claimed Lira had been imprisoned for 5 years, and trying to demand answers as to what was happening with him. Community Notes quickly stepped in to first point out that Carlson's description of Lira's situation was misleading, and then that Elon's tweets were also misleading.
After discovering that his own posts were being Community Noted (will he lose access to monetization?), he started claiming that state actors" were gaming" Community Notes. And then, hilariously, claimed that this was really a honey pot" to catch those gaming the system.
The Community Notes folks quickly hit back:
They pointed out that:
Community Notes requires agreement from contributors of differing perspectives, as such is highly resistant to gaming. The entire Community Notes algorithm and data is open source, and can be reviewed by anyone...
Community Notes ftw.
Soon after that, the Community Notes on Elon's post disappeared. Funny that.
And... soon after that, a different Community Note appeared on Elon's tweet again pushing back on the idea that Community Notes was easy to game:
So, yes, any such system of crowdsourcing things can be gamed, though ExTwitter's implementation of Community Notes (a modification of the tool Polis) is done in a way that, at the very least, makes it resistant to such gaming. It's not impossible to game, but it's also not easy given the way it's set up.
But, still, given how often Elon acts like Community Notes is an infallible system that solves most of his trust & safety issues, it's interesting to note that apparently it's only gamed" by state actors" when its calling out his own false tweets. The rest of the time Community Notes is so accurate that the company can base payment information on it. So, when Community Notes supports Elon's views, it's a key part of ExTwitter's platform strategy. When it goes against Elon's views, it's being abused by state actors.
What an astounding coincidence.