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Vitalik's insightful analysis of Twitter fact-checking tools, even praised by Musk, what is social note-taking?

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Vitalik

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has published an article on the fact-checking mechanism "Community Notes" on Twitter, also known as X platform. He highly praises the community notes, rating mechanism, and the underlying algorithm, with his professional analysis earning a retweet and praise from Musk.

Original article: What do I think about Community Notes?

Twitter's New Look

After officially taking over Twitter, Elon Musk made a series of changes, including layoffs, content moderation, and changes in the business model, which have sparked controversy. Some of the changes include:

  • Twitter limits daily reading to a thousand! Musk imposes Twitter reading limits

  • Twitter changes its name to "X," bidding farewell to the blue bird, Musk says it is necessary

  • Twitter Blue subscription fee raised to $20! Without a subscription, the "blue checkmark" will disappear

  • Not content with taking @x! Elon Musk snatches @music username, criticized as a thief

  • Binance Twitter account considers sharing ad revenue, tech journalists earn nearly tens of thousands of dollars a month

However, amidst these controversial actions, the importance of a new feature on Twitter is growing day by day, and it seems that people with different political views all appreciate it: "Community Notes."

What are Community Notes on Twitter?

Community Notes are a fact-checking tool on Twitter, initially proposed by former CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019 and began small-scale testing in January 2021. It has since expanded in stages, with the fastest development phase coinciding with Musk's acquisition of Twitter.

For example, in a tweet from Elon Musk last November, images circulating on the platform showed that CNN reported that Musk's failure to review Twitter posts would threaten freedom of speech.

At this point, the Community Notes below played a role, pointing out that CNN did not report this, and the title and subtitles in the image had been modified.

Vitalik: Community Notes are the closest application to crypto values

Vitalik pointed out that Community Notes often appear in tweets with a large audience, including controversial political tweets. He and many others with different political views believe that once a tweet has Community Notes, it usually contains valuable and informative content.

He said:

What interests me most about Community Notes is that while it is not a crypto project, it may be the closest application to crypto values we see in mainstream society. Community Notes are not written by centrally filtered experts but can be edited and voted on by anyone. Whether a Community Note appears on a tweet is entirely determined by open-source algorithms. Although not perfect, it is remarkably close to the ideal of neutrality and trust, even in controversial situations.

How the Community Notes Algorithm Works

1. Twitter Account Conditions

To write Community Notes, a Twitter account must meet the following conditions:

  1. Not recently violated Twitter platform rules

  2. Registered for over 6 months

  3. Phone verified

Accounts meeting these conditions can register and participate in Community Notes.

Vitalik suggests that eligible users can first rate existing notes and accumulate ratings. Once they reach a certain score, they can then write Community Notes for tweets.

2. Community Notes Rating Calculation

When writing, this Community Note will be rated by other Community Note members, with three types of ratings currently available:

  1. Helpful

  2. Not Helpful

  3. Somewhat Helpful

If the Community Note score is above 0.40, it will be displayed below the tweet.

Vitalik points out that the scoring calculation is not a simple sum or average but prioritizes ratings from people with different perspectives and angles.

In short, if a member often rates Community Notes as "Not Helpful," then when they agree with a note, that note's rating will be particularly high.

Community Notes Rating Calculation

3. Mitigating Disparate Ratings

Vitalik tested the rating mechanism of Twitter's Community Notes using open-source code to show that the algorithm weakens negative ratings from "different ideological groups," attempting to allow different groups to give positive evaluations to the notes.

The ranking is as follows:

  1. 0.3 points: +2 points from the same ideological group, 0 points from a different group

  2. 0.2 points: +4 points from the same ideological group, -2 points from a different group, polarizing ratings

  3. 0.09 points

  4. 0.15 points

Simply put, looking at 1 and 2, their total scores should theoretically be the same. However, the rating mechanism of Community Notes penalizes negative ratings from different groups.

Based on his own experience, Vitalik noted that the top-rated Community Notes are usually more helpful than the second-ranked ones.

Real-Life Examples of Community Notes

Renowned political commentator Ian Bremmer complained about a month ago that Community Notes below tweets from Chinese government officials were being deleted.

This sparked speculation about "substantial business interests between Musk and China" leading to intervention.

However, Vitalik, after verifying the code, discovered that this was because the note initially received a high rating but subsequent audiences voted it as "Not Helpful," leading to its deletion.

In fact, the Community Notes feature on Twitter has received considerable praise:

The note points out that Tibo's tweet stole content from another user
A 10-year-old's lung disease, the note points out that it is actually "walnuts"

Are Community Notes not good enough?

Vitalik cited an article pointing out that achieving perfection with Community Notes is challenging:

The implementation of Community Notes is severely hindered as it must gain universal acceptance from different political viewpoints. Both left-wing and right-wing individuals must agree that notes can be added below tweets. In an increasingly partisan environment, achieving this consensus is almost impossible.

In a situation where the public generally distrusts fact-checking mechanisms, Vitalik supports Community Notes and advocates for two points:

  1. Trust the code: Community Notes understand facts better than any voting system; they see opinions from different groups as valuable and developable resources, which seems very valuable.

  2. Fact-checking is not about correcting everything; the goal is to remind the public that there may be multiple perspectives on an issue.

In conclusion, Vitalik stated that Community Notes are not a panacea but a fascinating social media experiment. He sees that Community Notes have provided a lot of value, preventing centralized manipulation, and should receive more appreciation. He hopes to see more projects with similar algorithms thrive in the future.

Vitalik's in-depth analysis of Community Notes received retweets and praise from Musk.