Maya Kensington
Meta has initiated a significant expansion of its Community Notes program, launching a broader test of its crowdsourced fact-checking initiative in selected Latin American countries.
Recently, Meta updated the details on the Community Notes explainer page to include the following information: “Currently, Community Notes is open to contributors in the United States. We are also beginning to test Community Notes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Individuals in these countries can sign up to contribute. Once we are confident in the product’s functionality and potential for success, we will look to fully launch in these nations — starting to publish Community Notes and moving away from our third-party fact-checking program.”
Previously, this description only included the U.S.., but Meta has now formally confirmed the expansion to these additional countries.
Meta introduced Community Notes in the U.S. back in January 2025. This contentious shift aligned the company more closely with X, adopting a less interventionist approach to content moderation. The primary goal of Community Notes is to empower users to determine acceptable content, thereby reducing the platform’s direct responsibility for moderation and limiting the influence of external moderation entities on what is permissible within its applications.
Meta asserts that this approach has yielded positive results. In May 2025, the company revealed that since the launch of Community Notes in the U.S., enforcement errors dropped by 50%, indicating that the new system is functioning effectively.
However, a reduction in enforcement mistakes may also signal a decrease in overall enforcement activities.
A notable concern regarding Community Notes is that notes are only made public if there is a consensus across political lines. This means that contributors from different political viewpoints must agree on whether a post warrants a note before it becomes visible.
In cases involving contentious political issues, reaching such agreement is often impossible. many Community Notes may remain unseen, even when the posts share misleading information. Research has shown that the majority of Community Notes do not get displayed to users. many undisplayed Community Notes raise valid concerns.
If a Community Note is not displayed, there is no mechanism for contesting its accuracy. This suggests that Meta’s reported decrease in enforcement errors may not accurately reflect its effectiveness or reliability.
Despite these challenges, Meta is moving forward with the Community Notes initiative while simultaneously reducing its collaborations with third-party fact-checkers in several regions.
This issue was highlighted by Meta’s Oversight Board on Thursday as a potential concern, especially in light of this expansion:
According to the Oversight Board: “In our policy advisory opinion regarding Community Notes issued earlier this year, we noted how community notes can enhance discussions on important topics and promote free expression. Nonetheless, we warned that in certain contexts, such as repressive human rights environments, areas marked by significant division and political violence, nations affected by widespread disinformation, high-stakes electoral situations, and ongoing crises, community notes could lead to real-world harm, which Meta has a responsibility to prevent or address. These circumstances are indeed present in some of the countries where Meta plans to test these notes.”
The Oversight Board urged Meta to provide a comprehensive overview of country-specific risk factors before proceeding with the rollout of Community Notes. it appears that Meta has not yet fulfilled this request.
Ivy Caldwell
David Bridges
