Reproduce “Community notes reduce engagement with and diffusion of false information online” on OpenResearch
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About this paper
Isaac Slaughter, Axel Peytavin, Johan Ugander, Martin Saveski
Research from the University of Washington and Stanford University found that X's Community Notes significantly decrease user engagement and alter the diffusion patterns of potentially misleading content. Attaching a note led to a 46.1% reduction in additional repost growth and a 13.5% reduction in additional view growth within 48 hours, while also making information cascades less deep and less 'viral'.
Key insights
- Crowd-sourced fact-checking, as implemented by Community Notes, can effectively reduce both user engagement and the structural virality of information cascades at scale.
- The intervention more strongly reduces explicit amplification (reposts, likes) than passive exposure (views) or conversational engagement (replies), indicating a primary influence on users' willingness to endorse content.
- Faster note attachment and certain post characteristics (e.g., presence of media, specific partisan lean) are associated with larger reductions in engagement, offering actionable insights for system optimization.
Summary by alphaXiv.
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