Community notes reduce engagement with and diffusion of false information online.

ABSTRACT: Social networks scaffold the diffusion of information on social media. Much attention has been given to the spread of true vs. false content on online social platforms, including the structural differences between their diffusion patterns. However, much less is known about how platform interventions on false content alter the engagement with and diffusion of such content. In this work, we estimate the causal effects of Community Notes, a novel fact-checking feature adopted by X (formerly Twitter) to solicit and vet crowd-sourced fact-checking notes for false content. We gather detailed time series data for 40,078 posts for which notes have been proposed and use synthetic control methods to estimate a range of counterfactual outcomes. We find that attaching fact-checking notes significantly

SUBMITTER: Slaughter I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12478135 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature