Chief Twit’s favorite Twitter feature might now be the site’s Achilles’ heel.
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, he has frequently promoted the platform Community Notes feature. Formerly known as Birdwatch and first launched in January 2021, Community Notes allows users without policy violations who are accepted into the program to embed context into other users’ tweets. In the past, the feature — which existed long before Musk — was used to debunk viral misinformation about voter fraud or COVID-19 vaccine safety.
The tweet may have been deleted
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Now, just over a month into Musk’s reign, community ratings are being used to spread anti-Semitic content.
On Thursday, controversial rapper Kanye West appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars program, with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, as part of his media tour to promote an alleged upcoming presidential election in 2024. In the now infamous appearance, West said proclaimed his “love” for the Nazis and his admiration for Adolf Hitler.
At the time of the show’s taping, West was the only one on Jones’ show who did not have a banned account on the Twitter platform. To circumvent these bans, West passed his smartphone to Jones, Fuentes and panelist Ali Alexander so that each of them could tweet using their account.
The tweets posted on West’s account by the group of far-right conspiracy theorists were fairly innocuous. Jones, Fuentes and Alexander basically called on Musk to stand up for “free speech” and unban their accounts.
Tweet from Alex Jones on Kanye West’s account with a community note promoting a banned link. (Mashable removed the link address.)
Still, these tweets from West’s account were the only ones that added community notes. These tweets featured user notes – users accepted by Twitter into the Community Notes program – indicating which of the three extremists had posted them with a link to Alex Jones’ Banned Video website.
Ali Alexander’s tweet on Kanye West’s account with a community note promoting a banned link. (Mashable removed the link address.)
Tweet by Nick Fuentes from Kanye West’s account with a community note promoting a banned link. (Mashable removed the link address.)
West, whose account was banned by Musk soon after for promoting anti-Semitic imagery and “inciting violence,” never tweeted a link to his interview with Alex Jones. In fact, the Banned Video website is banned on Twitter and users cannot even post a tweet linking to the website. Yet these community notes may have served as a workaround, directly linking to and promoting Jones’ website featuring West’s anti-Semitic interview. And that link was embedded in several tweets posted by West’s account as they went viral with hundreds of thousands of likes and millions of views.
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In this case, the inclusion of community ratings was unnecessary as there was no debunking of the content contained in West’s tweets. If these notes had been necessary, users could have connected to reliable sources of information describing the events that unfolded. The ratings for each of these tweets, however, were clearly copied and pasted verbatim by the same user(s) attempting to circumvent Twitter’s moderation system.
Obviously the Community Notes feature was being used as a workaround specifically to share those banned links to West’s interview. And it worked. These community notes remained active on West’s tweets as the posts continued to go viral. They have never been deleted, regardless of the fact that other users can “rate” community notes and delete those that add no real context. It wasn’t until West’s entire account was banned from the platform that the community ratings related to Jones’ show were no longer visible.
Since Musk acquired Twitter in late October, he has continually solicited feedback from prominent right-wing users regarding the direction of the platform. Musk recently reinstated many controversial right-wingers once banned, like Donald Trump, while suspending a number of left-wing users, like the researcher Chad Loder which frequently reports on the extreme right.
Longtime Community Notes members also reported a change in the program since Musk took over, noting that the feature has been used more often by right-wing users. Musk fired key Twitter employees involved in the program, leaving the feature unchecked even though he continues to promote it.
“Since [Musk] took over, we no longer have a moderator,” a Community Notes user told the Washington Post in the weeks following Musk’s acquisition of the company.
