Elon Musk apparently no longer believes that crowdsourcing fact-checking through Community Notes can never be manipulated and is, thus, the best way to correct bad posts on his social media platform X.
Community Notes are supposed to be added to posts to limit misinformation spread after a broad consensus is reached among X users with diverse viewpoints on what corrections are needed. But Musk now claims a “fix” is needed to prevent supposedly outside influencers from allegedly gaming the system.
“Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk wrote on X. “Working to fix this.”
Musk’s announcement came after Community Notes were added to X posts discussing a poll generating favorable ratings for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That poll was conducted by a private Ukrainian company in partnership with a state university whose supervisory board was appointed by the Ukrainian government, creating what Musk seems to view as a conflict of interest.
Although other independent polling recently documented a similar increase in Zelenskyy’s approval rating, NBC News reported, the specific poll cited in X notes contradicted Donald Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy is unpopular, and Musk seemed to expect X notes should instead be providing context to defend Trump’s viewpoint. Musk even suggested that by pointing to the supposedly government-linked poll in Community Notes, X users were spreading misinformation.
“It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky[y]-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!” Musk wrote on X.
Musk’s attack on Community Notes is somewhat surprising. Although he has always maintained that Community Notes aren’t “perfect,” he has defended Community Notes through multiple European Union probes challenging their effectiveness and declared that the goal of the crowdsourcing effort was to make X “by far the best source of truth on Earth.” At CES 2025, X CEO Linda Yaccarino bragged that Community Notes are “good for the world.”
Yaccarino invited audience members to “think about it as this global collective consciousness keeping each other accountable at global scale in real time,” but just one month later, Musk is suddenly casting doubts on that characterization while the European Union continues to probe X.
Perhaps most significantly, Musk previously insisted as recently as last year that Community Notes could not be manipulated, even by Musk. He strongly disputed a 2024 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that claimed that toxic X users were downranking accurate notes that they personally disagreed with, claiming any attempt at gaming Community Notes would stick out like a “neon sore thumb.”
Musk seemingly facing hard truth about Community Notes
Now, Musk seems to be admitting that Community Notes can be gamed—not by X users exerting political will, but seemingly by X users coming together and agreeing that certain media and government sources are credible.
It’s unclear what changes may be coming to “fix” the problem, which from a certain angle seems to be a matter of Musk personally disagreeing with the majority of Community Notes writers and seeking a technical solution to impose his viewpoint. That seems to directly counter the goal of Community Notes, as described on X’s website:
“We don’t expect all notes to be perceived as helpful by all people all the time. Instead, the goal is to ensure that on average notes that earn the status of Helpful are likely to be seen as helpful by a wide range of people from different points of view, and not only be seen as helpful by people from one viewpoint.”
Of course, if X went back to traditional fact-checking methods, it would not be unusual for Musk to be calling the shots on what content flies. But Trump has long criticized social media companies for censoring users they disagree with, and Community Notes was seemingly well-positioned as a way to circumvent that criticism.
Commentators disagree on the effectiveness of crowdsourced fact-checking methods like Community Notes, which both Meta and YouTube have now also adopted, quickly copying X.
Neil Johnson, a George Washington University physics professor closely monitoring how misinformation spreads online, told NBC News that Community Notes is a “poor substitute” for formal fact-checking methods.
But last year Bloomberg pointed to several studies suggesting that “crowdsourcing worked just as well” as using professional fact-checkers in some instances, such as “when assessing the accuracy of news stories.” That piece concluded that a two-pronged approach combining both methods could benefit social media users most.
However, a hard truth for Musk to face may be that X users are largely incapable of discerning facts without relying on traditional fact-checking organizations that Musk disagrees should be the sole arbiters of truth online. NBC News noted a February study surveying 1 million notes and finding that “the evidence from X clearly shows that users rely on the work of fact-checking organizations often” when suggesting Community Notes.