In an effort to dispel misinformation on a platform famed for its misinformation long before Elon Musk ever took the reins, Twitter is adding Community Notes to posts that users have engaged with (liked, replied to, or retweeted) in the past. If a post is found to have been promoting an idea that is factually incorrect, the Community Notes will notify you and ask you “do your own research”.
It’s an interesting concept, and a helpful step forward – if only Elon Musk could stop being Elon Musk.
Users have noticed that, thus far, these Community Notes only show up on tweets about Tesla, which is Elon Musk’s car and tech manufacturing business, and not appearing on favourable tweets about Tesla too. Many users liking tweets about Tesla that painted it in a negative light started getting notifications on Monday night.
One particular tweet gained over 30,000 likes, and soon users flooded in with their screenshots of their Community Notes, which read: “Help keep Twitter a place for reliable info. Find out more before liking this Tweet.”
As one user, @Repiteo, succinctly pointed out: “So Pfizer is currently trending from conspiracy theorists and those tweets can be liked/retweeted with zero issue. Attempting to like/retweet this Tesla post flashes a warning to find further information while providing no further information. Unbiased forum, by the way.”
And, according to Forbes, the link between Community Notes and what gets flagged isn’t Tesla, but China.
