Meta to test ‘Community Notes’ using algorithm from Elon Musk’s X

Tech giant says it expects new feature to be ‘less biased’ than previous third-party fact-checking program.

Meta has said that its “Community Notes” feature intended to replace third-party fact checkers will use the open-source algorithm developed by Elon Musk’s X.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the moderation shake-up in January amid a flurry of moves by Big Tech to ingratiate itself with United States President Donald Trump’s administration.

The move followed years of accusations by conservatives that fact-checking efforts often labelled legitimate viewpoints as misinformation for political or ideological reasons.

While Meta’s announcement was welcomed by Trump and many conservatives, misinformation scholars warned that the move would add to the tidal wave of false claims and fake news online.

In a blog post on Thursday, Meta said that using X’s technology for the crowdsourced fact-checking tool would allow it to “improve it for our own platforms over time”.

“As our own version develops, we may explore different or adjusted algorithms to support how Community Notes are ranked and rated,” Meta said.

“We’re building this in the open while learning from contributors and seeing how it works in practice in our products. We don’t expect this process to be perfect but we’ll continue to improve as we learn.”

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said that it would begin testing the feature on March 18 and that 200,000 potential contributors had signed up so far to help assess the accuracy of content on its platforms.

The California-based tech giant said notes would not be published unless they are deemed accurate by contributors with a diverse range of viewpoints.

“We expect Community Notes to be less biased than the third party fact checking program it replaces, and to operate at a greater scale when it is fully up and running,” Meta said.

“When we launched the fact checking program in 2016, we were clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth and believed that turning to expert fact checking organizations was the best solution available.”

Meta said the new feature will be rolled out across the US after beta testing and it plans to eventually introduce the feature for all users worldwide.