Topline
The relatively new community notes feature on X, formerly known as Twitter, almost always featured correct COVID-19 vaccine information last year, a new study published by the American Medical Association said Wednesday—as X owner Elon Musk touts the controversial user-generated tool as an alternative to moderation by company staff.
Key Facts
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found community notes on X—a feature that allows normal users to add rebuttals to tweets—was used to correct fake health information in posts about COVID-19 vaccines hundreds of times in its first year.
Between December 2022 and December 2023, 45,783 notes mentioned terms related to vaccines or COVID, and more than 650 of those specifically addressed the COVID-19 vaccines, including posts about side effects of the shots, conspiracy theories and effectiveness.
Of those notes, 97.5% provided entirely accurate information citing sources like peer-reviewed studies, primary data sources and major news outlets.
Those accurate corrections were viewed between 500 million and 1 billion times, the study said, a number based on X’s viewing metrics that have drawn criticism for seemingly overinflating the reach of certain posts.
Crucial Quote
“It’s remarkable to witness the online community’s adeptness in steering conversations towards accurate and high-quality evidence when provided with the right tools,” Nimit Desai, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement.
Key Background
The World Health Organization in 2020 described the rapid spread of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines on social media as an “infodemic.” More than half of working Americans reported they’d been exposed to lies about the vaccines’ dangers on social media, a 2022 study published by Scientific Reports said, including false claims that vaccines cause autism and that Bill Gates was leading a push to inject people with a microchip via the shots. That spread of false information helped to lower the number of people who signed up to be vaccinated and caused more people to take pause before getting the shot, researchers have said, contributing to widespread vaccine hesitancy that the World Health Organization has called one of the top 10 threats to global health. The Brown University School of Public Health estimates more than 300,000 COVID deaths from January 2021 to April 2022 could have been prevented by vaccinations. Researchers estimate the spread of misinformation has cost the U.S. economy between $50 million and $300 million per day in hospitalizations, long-term illness, lives lost and economic losses from missed work. Social media platforms like Facebook have faced intense pressure to police false COVID-19 claims, but since Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he has generally rolled back the company’s moderation policies, instead leaning on tools like community notes—and facing criticism in the process as false claims circulated.
Big Number
48%. That’s how many Americans as of August 2021 were getting a lot or some of their information about the COVID-19 vaccines from social media, according to Pew Research.
Contra
Elon Musk cast community notes as a way to combat misinformation without the direct oversight of major social media companies. Musk called the program, which gave users on the platform the ability to flag lies or add context to misleading posts, a “gamechanger” for combating false information and notes have appeared on posts from President Joe Biden, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other notable figures. But in the almost two years since the feature was first rolled out to certain users, it has also been widely criticized for failing to show the corrections in a timely manner and sometimes featuring argumentative responses that don’t actually serve to correct information. In October, X modified the types of notes that were allowed and now require they include a source reference. In February, Musk himself was hit with a community note and publicly argued with it online.
