Upper House Election: Expert Concerned as Unverified Posts on X Left Unchallenged; Community Note Suggestions Published in Under 10% of Cases
The analysis was jointly conducted by Hiroyuki Fujishiro, professor of social media studies at Hosei University, and The Yomiuri Shimbun. The low release rate of Community Notes had also been highlighted as a problem in posts about the Hyogo gubernatorial election and the U.S. presidential race last year. Fujishiro called for caution in the use of social media in the run-up to elections.
X in Japan introduced the Community Notes function in 2023 as part of measures against false and misleading information. The function allows users who have signed up as 'contributors' to add useful background information to posts that may cause misunderstanding among readers.
Community Notes are not immediately displayed. Other contributors evaluate them as either 'helpful,' 'somewhat helpful' or 'not helpful.' Until sufficient ratings are obtained, notes remain unreleased. If a note is deemed helpful from a variety of people with different perspectives, it is released, but when a note is rated not helpful, it is not published.
Fujishiro and the general incorporated association Code for Japan have extracted and categorized posts and notes related to the July 20 upper house election from X's database, among other sources.
The Yomiuri Shimbun analyzed the collected data and found out that, as of Wednesday, 368 notes had been created for 315 posts. Of these notes, only 21 had been released with another 21 rated not suitable for release, leaving 326 notes, about 90%, remaining unreleased.
Voting for the upper house election will take place in the middle of a three-day weekend. A total of 40 notes were created in response to 32 posts making such claims as that the election schedule was 'a government plot to lower voter turnout.' Combined, these posts had earned at least 36.25 million views.
Most notes denied the claims, saying that they are baseless information, but none have been published, with 39 notes listed as unreleased, with the remaining note rated as not suitable for release.
Regarding a post saying 'identification is not required for early voting, making it so easy to commit fraud,' which had amassed at least 5.12 million views, one note denying the content was created, but remained unreleased.
'This is completely wrong,' Fujishiro said. 'Even notes about posts that appear uncontroversial are not being shown, and the reasons why are unclear.'
'Removing false or misleading information from social media is difficult, so not looking at it when elections near is an option,' he said.
The Yomiuri Shimbun sought comments from X Corp. in Japan through its official account, but no response had been received by Friday.
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