Is Group Notes the singular answer to efficient content material moderation on social apps? No.
Is it a useful complement that may help in addressing varied types of misinformation and misrepresentation, whereas additionally enabling customers to raised spotlight considerations in posts? Positively.
The problem lies someplace in between, as Elon appears to be like to push Notes as X’s fundamental security internet to deal with all sorts of considerations, whereas analysts proceed to focus on flaws within the Group Notes system, which is resulting in extra deceptive content material being amplified within the app.
Although this may assist.
At the moment, X has announced that it’s going to now distribute extra notifications to customers who’ve engaged with a publish that’s later had a Group Word appended.
As per X:
“Generally a observe seems on a publish after you’ve seen it. To assist, Group Notes sends notifications to individuals who have engaged with a publish that later receives a observe. We’ve now scaled it as much as deal with even essentially the most seen and highly-engaged posts, so extra of you can be (and are already) seeing these.”
It is a good addition, which is able to assist to as a minimum increase questions amongst X customers concerning the content material that they’ve seen, replied to, Favored, and many others.
If a publish, for instance, gave them the impression that one thing had occurred, when it truly hadn’t, these sorts of follow-ups could possibly be very efficient in slowing the unfold of false studies, which might additionally embody deepfakes, AI-generated photos, and many others.
There’s a lot to love about Group Notes on this respect. However once more, the issue just isn’t a lot that the Notes are overly unreliable, nor that they don’t serve a function. It’s greater than X is placing an excessive amount of religion within the course of being the savior for its misinformation points, by letting customers resolve what’s true and what’s not, with out X administration stepping in, or no less than, not stepping in on the similar degree that Twitter’s previous well being and security crew had been.
However a whole lot of this comes all the way down to notion. As per its “Twitter Recordsdata” inner exploration shortly after the corporate modified palms, Elon and Co. outlined what they perceived to be large corruption in data circulate, because the previous Twitter crew sought to suppress sure data on the behest of presidency officers.
However that’s not likely what the paperwork confirmed. What the insights did present is that Twitter’s well being and security crew labored with varied official authorities to make sure that it remained conscious of associated considerations. A few of these it actioned, most it didn’t, however the studies demonstrated what most would view as a accountable method to managing key discussions, and the amplification of such, by means of official partnerships that might have some bearing on future technique.
The issue is, this additionally concerned a problem that Elon himself believes was a conspiracy idea, within the COVID pandemic.
In coping with COVID, the Twitter crew made selections primarily based on the perfect data it had on the time, and on reflection, a few of these calls might not have been appropriate. However that’s on reflection, and within the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, the crew have been doing what they may. However that’s all of the proof that Elon and his crew wanted to flag this as mass censorship, marking Twitter as a automobile for “accepted narratives”, which he’s now decided that X won’t ever be.
Which is why he desires Group Notes to work, in order that some data deemed unfaithful, false, deceptive, a few of that can nonetheless get by means of. As a result of you may’t belief the mainstream dialogue, however you may belief the folks, in Musk’s view.
The issue with that’s Group Notes doesn’t actually work in highlighting a whole lot of misinformation as a result of it’s primarily based on political consensus, which means that individuals from either side of the political spectrum have to agree on notes earlier than they’re displayed.
On a variety of extremely divisive points, that settlement won’t ever come. Like COVID, the warfare in Israel, the warfare in Ukraine, border safety, and many others. A few of these are hardline matters, that nobody’s going to concede. So related Notes are by no means proven, and by no means seen, resulting in broad circulation of deceptive claims, primarily based on X’s personal system.
Is that a greater final result than having X’s personal crew step in? It’s not possible to say, however I do really feel that, sooner or later, that is going to result in important points in consequence.
So whereas there are good factors to the method, and there’s a particular worth in Group Notes, and notifications like these new retrospective prompts, the method just isn’t what Elon and Co. suppose. Which could possibly be problematic.
Conceptually, there’s a logic there, and different approaches, like Reddit’s up and downvotes system, have offered comparable outcomes.
However Group Notes is unlikely to be the defend that Musk appears to imagine, or need to imagine, as he reforms the app.