Even as India is gearing up for the Lok Sabha elections, social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has expanded its feature 'Community Notes', which is akin to a fact-checking programme, in the country.
'Community Notes', "aims to create a better-informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts," according to information on the X's helpcentre.
Contributors can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note is publicly shown on a post.
'Community Notes' has contributors in 69 nations around the world.
Announcing the expansion of the programme in India, Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday: "Community Notes now active on India!"
Welcoming new contributors to the programme, the social media site said on its official 'Community Notes' handle: "Our first contributors are joining today, and we'll be expanding over time. As always, we'll monitor quality to ensure that notes are found helpful by people from different points of view." "Contributors are people like you. Anyone on X whose account meets the eligibility criteria can sign up to help. All contributors start with the ability to rate notes, and over time, can earn the ability to write," it added.
"X doesn’t write, rate or moderate notes (unless they break X's Rules.) We believe giving people a voice to make these choices together is a fair and effective way to add information that helps people stay better informed," it said, adding that the programme is "built on transparency."
How does it prevent abuse?
Community Notes aims to find notes that many people from different points of view would find helpful. It takes into account not only how many ratings a note has received, but also whether people who rated it helpful seem to come from different perspectives. "Because notes need to genuinely be found helpful by people who tend to disagree, the programme is more likely to identify notes that many people find helpful."
How does a post get a note?
Contributors can suggest a note on any post. Notes are then rated for helpfulness by other contributors. They are only shown on posts if they are rated helpful by enough people from different perspectives.
