Elon Musk’s X Rolls Out Community Notes Prog In India To Combat Misinformation

Elon Musk’s microblogging platform X has unveiled its Community Notes programme in India, enabling users to participate in the fact-checking tweets shared on the platform, creating a more informed digital environment.

Announcing the launch on Thursday (April 4), X’s affiliate handle, Community Notes, extended a warm welcome to new contributors in India.

“Our first contributors are joining today, and we’ll be expanding over time. As always, we’ll monitor quality to ensure that notes are found helpful by people from different points of view,” the tweet read.

The concept of Community Notes was first introduced in the US in 2021.

According to an X statement, Community Notes aims to create a better-informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. By signing up as a contributor, people can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post.

It added that with this Community Notes have opened up to welcome contributors from 69 countries around the world and the company is working on adding more regularly.

“This is an open and transparent process, that’s why we’ve made the Community Notes algorithm open source and publicly available on GitHub, along with the data that powers it so anyone can audit, analyze or suggest improvements,” the statement further said.

Though quality checks are done by the company, these notes are created independently by the contributors and cannot be edited or modified by X. Also, a post with a Community Note will not be labelled, removed or addressed by X unless it is found to be violating the platform’s rules, terms of service or its privacy policy. 

Besides, the post’s author will also be entitled to request for review to X if the user doesn’t find the note relevant or significant to it. 

Lately, the Indian government has been upfront in protecting the privacy of the netizens and creating an atmosphere of regulated social media use. 

Recently, X claimed that the government has issued “executive orders” asking the microblogging site to take action against specific accounts and posts, subject to potential penalties such as significant fines and imprisonment.

Also, last year in October, the MeitY issued notices to multiple social media platforms including X to remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their websites. It has warned that non compliance with the order will entail strict action, including withdrawal of safe harbour protections.

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