Meta is launching a new feature called Community Notes on all its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The move represents a radical shift from mainstream third-party fact-checking mechanisms to a community-based model. This follows after the CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said in January that Meta’s third-party fact-checking program would be halted following claims of bias and lack of trust.
Community Notes will allow users to add context to posts that they believe are confusing or misleading. To contribute, users must be based in the United States, be over 18 years old, have a Meta account that is more than six months old and in good standing, and have a verified phone number or two-factor authentication enabled. At present, approximately 200,000 people in the U.S. have signed up to contribute.
The feature is similar to X’s (then Twitter) Community Notes, which enabled people to make submissions that offer additional context to tweets. For the note, however, to be published, it had to be endorsed by those who hold different views in order to guarantee that what was contributed acted as helpful context for a wide variety of individuals. The objective was to avoid bias through reliance on the consensus of individuals in society, as opposed to being an expert-based approach.
Community Notes will be 500 characters or less and will have to contain a link to verify the assertion. The notes will remain anonymous, emphasizing the value of context over authorship. The feature will initially roll out in six popular languages in the U.S., which are English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Portuguese. Users cannot post notes on ads but can provide context to other content.
Meta will introduce Community Notes gradually, starting with a small group of the waitlist to test the writing and rating system before expanding it further. The company emphasizes that it is going slow so that the system can be effective and that notes won’t be publicly visible until the algorithm is well-fed and tested.
The shift to Community Notes follows Meta deliberately deciding to advance free expression and attempt to resist censorship accusations. The company believes community-led steps will be less biased and scalable than traditional fact-checking practices. The firm is concerned, however, if this model can resist disinformation because prior models in other platforms have been difficult to resist.
In contrast to traditional fact-checking, Community Notes does not censor the spread of content with attached notes or penalize users. This is a move that agrees with Meta’s mission to regain free expression on its platforms following allegations of exceeding its limits by overmoderating content. The launch of Community Notes has been seen as a significant overhaul of Meta’s content moderation policy, focusing more on community control than on control by experts.
