The controversy over the spread of misinformation on X (formerly known as Twitter) is still very much alive a year after Elon Musk landed on the platform. The businessman announced this Sunday that any publication that has been modified by the “community notes” will not be able to receive money through the income generated by advertising. The objective of this change is to discourage the spread of false information on income. The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.”
Launched earlier this year, the X advertising revenue sharing program offers users a portion of the revenue from ads displayed in responses to their posts. The program is only available to users subscribed to the platform’s paid program known as Blue, who also need to have at least 500 followers, as well as a minimum of five million total organic impressions on all their publications in the last three months. . However, the posts that are most likely to go viral—and generate more income—are those that are polarized, negative, or even share misinformation, which leads some users to spread hoaxes to increase their profits.
Once again, Musk has left the power to moderate this content in the hands of the group of volunteers who are part of the @CommunityNotes. The system, developed since the summer, has not managed to stop the unprecedented avalanche of hoaxes in the war in Gaza, for example. The notes are published after reaching a certain threshold of useful votes from “people with different points of view”, as explained by it is necessary to verify. The platform only publishes notes that have received enough votes in favor from users who usually disagree with their assessments, in order to guarantee ideological transversality.
The businessman has also anticipated the possibility that users will abuse X’s new policy and use content moderation with the intention of restricting possible advertising revenue from a given account. “It’s worth noting that any attempt to use @CommunityNotes as a weapon to demonetize people will be immediately apparent, because all code and data is open,” Musk said. It is not clear from his words whether the platform will directly prevent users from taking advantage of “community notes” to strategically demonetize accounts or if it will simply be evident when they do so.
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