X's Community Notes fails to counter US election misinformation
A report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that X's Community Notes feature failed to counter false claims about the US election, with 74% of 283 analyzed misleading posts not displaying fact-checking labels to all users. The posts without visible Community Notes accumulated 2.2 billion views.
What happened
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a report on 31 October 2024 analyzing 283 misleading posts about the U.S. election on X.
Out of the 283 misleading posts analyzed, 209 posts (74%) did not display Community Notes to all X users correcting false and misleading claims about the election.
The 209 misleading posts that lacked visible Community Notes accumulated 2.2 billion views.
Reported impact
The failure of Community Notes to display fact-checking labels on election misinformation posts allowed false claims to reach billions of users unchecked.
Index analysis
Community Notes is a crowd-sourced fact-checking feature launched by X that allows users to flag false or misleading content rather than relying on a dedicated fact-checking team.
Governance controls
CCDH urged X to invest in safety and transparency in response to the findings.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.