Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Technology, UCSD, Vaccine Studies / 25.04.2024
UCSD Study Finds X’s Community Notes Fosters Learning Environment Rather Than Censorship Model
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
John W. Ayers, PhD MA
Vice Chief of Innovation | Assoc. Professor
Div. Infectious Disease & Global Public Health University of California San Diego Since the World Health Organization declared an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation, there have been surprisingly few achievements to celebrate. X's Community Notes have emerged as an innovative strategy to address misinformation as reported in the latest issue of JAMA.
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John W. Ayers, PhD MA
Vice Chief of Innovation | Assoc. ProfessorDiv. Infectious Disease & Global Public Health University of California San Diego Since the World Health Organization declared an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation, there have been surprisingly few achievements to celebrate. X's Community Notes have emerged as an innovative strategy to address misinformation as reported in the latest issue of JAMA.
Before the inception of Community Notes, social media companies employed various tactics to tackle misinformation, including censoring, shadowbanning (muting a user or their content on a platform without informing them), and adding generic warning labels to problematic content. However, these efforts were typically undisclosed meaning their effectiveness could not be studied.
In late 2022, X introduced Community Notes. This novel approach empowers volunteer, independent, anonymous, and ideologically diverse contributors to identify posts containing misinformation and to rectify misinformation by appending informative "notes" to suspect posts. The process is controlled by the public, instead of decision-makers at the company. Most importantly the system is open-sourced so it can be studied by external scientists.