Can we trust Musk's X?

Express Tribune

2 days ago

More than 90 per cent of X's (formerly Twitter) Community Notes – a crowd-sourced verification system popularised by Elon Musk's platform – are never published, a study said on Wednesday, highlighting major limits in its effectiveness as a debunking tool, reported AFP.
The study by the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), which analysed the entire public dataset of 1.76 million notes published by X between January 2021 and March 2025, comes as the platform's CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned after two years at the helm.
The community-driven moderation model – now embraced by major tech platforms including Facebook-owner Meta and TikTok – allows volunteers to contribute notes that add context or corrections to posts.
Other users then rate the proposed notes as "helpful" or "not helpful." If the notes get "helpful" ratings from enough users with diverse perspectives, they are published on X, appearing right below the challenged posts.
"The vast majority of submitted notes – more than 90 percent – never reach the public," DDIA's study said.
"For a program marketed as fast, scalable, and transparent, these figures should raise serious concerns."
Among English notes, the publication rate dropped from 9.5 per cent in 2023 to just 4.9 per cent in early 2025, the study said.
Spanish-language notes, however, showed some growth, with the publication rate rising from 3.6 per cent to 7.1 per cent over the same period, it added.
A vast number of notes remain unpublished due to lack of consensus among users during rating.
Thousands of notes also go unrated, possibly never seen and never assessed, according to the report.
"As the volume of notes submitted grows, the system's internal visibility bottleneck becomes more apparent – especially in English," the study said.
"Despite a rising number of contributors submitting notes, many notes remain stuck in limbo, unseen and unevaluated by fellow contributors, a crucial step for notes to be published."
'Viral misinformation'
In a separate finding, DDIA's researchers identified not a human but a bot-like account – dedicated to flagging crypto scams – as the most prolific contributor to the program in English, submitting more than 43,000 notes between 2021 and March 2025.
However, only 3.1 per cent of those notes went live, suggesting most went unseen or failed to gain consensus, the report said.
The study also noted that the time it takes for a note to go live had improved over the years, dropping from an average of more than 100 days in 2022 to 14 days in 2025.
"Even this faster timeline is far too slow for the reality of viral misinformation, timely toxic content, or simply errors about real-time events, which spread within hours, not weeks," DDIA's report said.
The findings are significant as tech platforms increasingly view the community-driven model as an alternative to professional fact-checking, which conservative advocates in countries such as the United States have long accused of a liberal bias.
Studies have shown Community Notes can work to dispel some falsehoods such as vaccine misinformation, but researchers have long cautioned that it works best for topics where there is broad consensus.
Some researchers have also cautioned that Community Notes users can be motivated by partisan motives and tend to target their political opponents.
X introduced Community Notes during the tenure of Yaccarino, who said on Wednesday that she had decided to step down after leading the company through a major transformation.
Yaccarino's departure
No reason was given for the former CEO's exit, but her resignation came as Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok triggered an online firestorm over its anti-Semitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and insulted Islam in separate posts on X.
In a short reply to her post on X, Musk wrote: "Thank you for your contributions."
Yaccarino – a former NBCUniversal advertising executive – took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Her appointment came as Musk sought to focus on product development while bringing in an experienced media manager to restore advertiser confidence.
The company has faced significant challenges since Musk's acquisition, including an exodus of advertisers and concerns over content moderation policies.
Critics have cited a rise in violent content, racism, antisemitism and misinformation on X.
Yaccarino's background in advertising was seen as crucial to rebuilding business relationships.
In her statement, Yaccarino praised the "historic business turn around" achieved by the X team and suggested the platform was entering "a new chapter" with xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company.
xAI in March acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued the social media platform at $33 billion, making it a subsidiary of Musk's AI company.
"X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world's most powerful culture signal," she wrote, adding that she would be "cheering you all on as you continue to change the world."
Analyst Jasmine Enberg from Emarketer said that being CEO "was always going to be a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted in the role longer than many expected."
"Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires," she told AFP.
Yaccarino's sudden exit "suggests a possible tipping point" in their relationship, even if the reasons are for now unknown.
During her tenure, X introduced new features including Community Notes, a crowd-sourced fact-checking system, and announced plans for "X Money," a financial services feature as part of Musk's vision to transform the platform into an "Everything App."
It also coincided with Musk's endorsement and financial backing of Donald Trump, which saw the South African-born multi-billionaire catapulted into the White House as a close advisor to the president, before a recent falling out.