Elon Musk's X Rolls Out Community Notes Feature In India (Photo by Bastian Riccardi on Unsplash)
Elon Musk‘s X, previously known as Twitter, has unveiled a new feature in India. The popular microblogging platform is rolling out support for posting Community Notes. This enables X users to participate in the fact-checking process of tweets shared on the platform.
This is considered a crucial move as the new feature arrives weeks before the Lok Sabha elections in India. According to X, Community Notes aim to “create a better informed world by empowering people on X” to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. Contributors will be able to leave notes on any post on X, and if enough contributors from various points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post.
Community Notes now active on India! https://t.co/cLcpcTIlcT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2024
“Welcome 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,” wrote X”s affiliate handle, Community Notes, in a post on April 4. According to X, this crowdsourced fact-checking program has contributors in 69 countries.
Billionaire Elon Musk has also announced the arrival of the new X feature in India. “Community Notes now active on India!” wrote the tech leader in his X handle on April 4. The Community Notes feature, previously called Birdwatch, was first introduced in 2021. The feature reportedly became available to users in the United States just before Elon Musk’s acquisition of X in October 2022. Later, the feature was expanded to other countries.
By introducing this feature in India, X is trying to control the spread of misinformation. Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, social media platforms are making efforts to prevent potential election- misinformation. At the same time, there are also concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) technology might be exploited to spread false information during elections.
