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The Journal
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Journal
Community Notes vanishes from X feeds, raising 'serious questions' amid ongoing EU probe
A USER-POWERED fact-checking system designed to curb misinformation on X, formerly Twitter, has quietly disappeared from user feeds. The unexplained disappearance of Community Notes, the social media site's main tool to stall the spread of misinformation, has raised questions whether the controversial Elon Musk-owned platform is meeting its legal obligations. Community Notes relies on user inputs to tag misleading posts on X and had been active since shortly after the takeover by Elon Musk in 2022 — a transition that saw the mass firing of staff whose jobs were to tackle hate speech, harassment, and misinformation. 'Persistent problems with Community Notes raise serious questions about X's capacity to meet its obligations under EU rules,' Eileen Culloty, Deputy Director of the DCU Institute for Media, Democracy, and Society told The Journal . 'Those rules say platforms need to have adequate measures for content moderation.' While the system still appears to be active — an official account that tracks posts tagged with community notes is still posting new content — these notes have not been appearing to users. A clear explanation for the disappearance is hard to glean from official X accounts. 'Community Notes on X are still active, with a recent update on May 19, 2025, to tackle manipulation, but many users report they're hard to see,' Grok, X's artificial intelligence chatbot said in response to a query on this. The most recent post from the official Community Notes account, on 26 May, reads, 'working to get notes appearing normally, as well,' in response to a post by X's official engineering account. That engineering post, published on 24 May, reads: 'We're still experiencing issues from yesterday's data center outage.' Posts from users complaining about this problem also appear on X at that date. A fire at a data centre in Oregon on 22 May has been suggested to have exacerbated technical issues at X. Advertisement 'X is a glitch-prone platform at the best of times and it recently suffered further disruption due to a fire at a data centre,' Culloty said. The Journal has reached out to X for further information. However, X's leader Elon Musk has been explicit that X does not respond to journalists queries, instead sending them 'infinite loops' of generic messages. Prior to that, the company would auto-respond with a poop emoji. The Community Notes system involves users signing up to be 'contributors' who leave notes on any X posts. 'If enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post,' X says. However, the Community Notes system has itself been used as a vector to spread disinformation . Studies have shown major spikes in hate speech since Musk took over X, as well as major failures to take down child sexual abuse material . 'Community Notes have been shown to be far from perfect', Aoife Gallagher, a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counter-extremism think-tank, told The Journal. 'They are open to manipulation and are often not published at all because a consensus has not been reached, meaning that information debunking a claim never reaches regular users of X. 'In saying that, when it works, it has been found to be useful. Its absence makes users of the platform even more vulnerable to consuming falsehoods.' Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced in March that it was replacing its fact checking partnerships in the United States with a similar Community Notes feature to that used on X. A spokesperson for the European Commission's representative on Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said that they could not comment on the outage as a legal proceeding against X is ongoing. 'The Commission opened an investigation into X regarding, among others, effectiveness of measures taken to combat information manipulation on the platform, notably the effectiveness of X's so-called 'Community Notes' system in the EU and the effectiveness of related policies mitigating risks to civic discourse and electoral processes,' they wrote. Preliminary findings released last July by the Commission found that X was in breach of the Digital Services Act, citing misleading practices, a lack of transparency, and a failure to provide data to researchers. However, the Community Notes system was not cited in these preliminary findings. 'The issue is now entangled in broader geopolitical tensions between the EU and the US given Musk's relationship to Trump and stated opposition to EU regulations,' Eilleen Culloty told The Journal. Want to be your own fact-checker? Visit our brand-new FactCheck Knowledge Bank for guides and toolkits Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... It is vital that we surface facts from noise. Articles like this one brings you clarity, transparency and balance so you can make well-informed decisions. We set up FactCheck in 2016 to proactively expose false or misleading information, but to continue to deliver on this mission we need your support. Over 5,000 readers like you support us. If you can, please consider setting up a monthly payment or making a once-off donation to keep news free to everyone. Learn More Support The Journal
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Non-monogamous people just as happy as monogamous people, study finds
Discussions of non-monogamy have boomed online in the past few years, as hookup apps like Feeld have made it easier for people to participate in "the lifestyle." As with any subject on the internet, though, there's been backlash to the non-monogamy hype. While some are looking for alternate relationship styles, others are trying to be tradwives who idealize monogamy and marriage. Even Feeld pointed out that, in research with the Kinsey Institute, that young adults fantasize about monogamy these days. SEE ALSO: How to get started with non-monogamy According to new research, however, they may not need to: An analysis of 35 studies involving over 24,000 people worldwide found no significant differences between monogamous and non-monogamous people. The peer-reviewed study published in The Journal of Sex Research states that both groups report similar levels of satisfaction in their relationships and sex lives. These satisfaction levels remained consistent across different demographics like LGBTQ and heterosexual people and differing non-monogamy types like open relationships and polyamory. (We explain the differences in our introduction to non-monogamy.) "Monogamous relationships are often assumed to offer greater satisfaction, intimacy, commitment, passion, and trust than non-monogamous ones. This widespread belief — what we term as the 'monogamy-superiority myth' — is often reinforced by stereotypes and media narratives," lead author, associate professor Joel Anderson, a principal research fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sexuality, Health, and Society at La Trobe University, said in the press release. "Our findings challenge this long-standing assumption outside of academia, providing further evidence that people in consensually non-monogamous relationships experience similar levels of satisfaction in their relationships and sex lives as those in monogamous ones," Anderson continued. There were limitations to the study, however. They were all self-reported, so respondents could be swayed to respond a certain way to justify their life choices. Also, as the study relied on online sampling, that could've reduced its representativeness and generalizability, the press release stated. Despite these limitations, alternative relationship structures are unlikely to go away soon — and the same goes for social media conversations about them.
