Elon Musk’s Social Notes: What you need to know about X users who are looking for him

The first thing you should know about Public Notes on Elon Musk’s tweets: there should be a a lot above them.

Public Notes, the Twitter/X-facts formerly known as Birdwatch, is often cited as one of the few good things that survived the tumultuous first year of Musk’s ownership. These user-generated notes often include links to high-quality resources. Like Reddit posts they live or die by upvotes (“helpful”) and downvotes (“unhelpful”) — enough of the latter and they disappear. Anyone can register to donate, if they don’t have any strikes against their account. Contributors are the only ones who see or vote on proposed notes before they are officially stamped on tweets.

Musk will often refer to Public Notes as a sign that he cares about the quality of information on a service that is crawling with intentional misinformation. You’re smart to do so: one study found that Social Notes increase trust in social media, and can help bring back defecting X users. But he doesn’t even need to put a thumb on the scale of the X algorithm to avoid himself.

With nearly 200 million followers, if even a small percentage of his adoring followers are registered to rate proposed public notes, they can shake up the system, intercept and rate any proposed note on Musk’s account as “useless” before he receives another. the badge of truth-testing is shame. Like in this instance, when retweeting a fake story about a bomb at a Trump rally was a step too far even for his supporters (Musk’s original quotes in the tweet were removed; the note remains).

The Tweet may have been deleted

This helps Musk a lot. Because as any study of his tweets confirms, the story of the bomb isn’t so far-fetched: Musk is constantly spreading misinformation. I New York Times looked at the value of one week in September, and found one-third “false, misleading or missing important content.”

In July, the month Musk endorsed Trump, the Center to Fight Digital Hate Crime identified 50 of Musk’s tweets that had been released by independent fact-checkers. None of them were recognized by the public, and they were viewed 1.2 billion times.

As things stand on the unofficial public notes leaderboard, Musk is at #55, with 70 public notes so far. Several accounts with the most replies and retweets are included in the top 10. The top account has more than 800 notes – but with an average of 50 lies per month, Musk would easily surpass them if the direction were equal.

So what can we learn from 70 facts that test that he did actually added to Musk’s account? Here’s the TL;DR.

Musk’s early characters weren’t that big of a deal.

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Just three of Musk’s 70 Social Notes tweets were before the date he brought this information to Twitter in October 2022. That’s not telling us much, since the Birdwatch service was slowly launched in January 2021 and completely discontinued. a few weeks before Musk’s arrival.

However, we can see how small the adjustment was at first. In his first post on Public Note, Musk said his Tesla Roadster was orbiting Mars; it actually orbits the sun somewhere in the (still very variable) space belt. Two other pre-Twitter notes are about EV tax credits and Hyperloop tunnels, which they say can’t be flooded. About, to use one of Musk’s favorite words, but not a big deal.

In Musk’s first week on Twitter, he collected four more notes. But they are harmless, and useful. The couple points out that Musk was joking, in case it wasn’t clear. He calls Public Notes “amazing”; The notification provides more information on how to join.

Then on Nov 4, 2022, Musk said that advertisers are “trying to destroy free speech in America” ​​by fleeing the service. Public Notes has come forward to reveal that advertisers are concerned about Musk’s approach to security laxity and misinformation as he fires those groups. And a new version of the Musk note was born.

There are more social notes in his technical posts than his political posts.

By 2023, Musk would receive 31 notes. It’s still his most scrutinized year yet. May 2023 — when Musk launched Ron DeSantis’ campaign on X, and incorrectly claimed DeSantis had set an “all-time fundraising record” — remains his most fact-checked month.

But that doesn’t mean he’s getting fact-checked on his political statements. Many Public Notes appear from his claims about technology and the media world, including a number of strange attacks on non-profits (see notes on his tweets about the Wikimedia Foundation, the Internet Archive, and NPR).

Musk is very vulnerable in the answers.

Of the 70 public notes on Musk’s tweets, the clear majority — 40 — are in tweets where Musk is replying to someone. That makes sense. X’s algorithm automatically optimizes Musk’s regular posts, making sure he appears in your “For You” tab even if you don’t follow him. But the algorithm does not delete his answers, so lies are more likely to find volunteers from Public Note volunteers who work in faith.

And what a lie they were! Answering his mother, Musk he lost knowledge of his father’s emerald mine; Public Notes immediately used his words against him, digging up the words that he admitted that his father owned the mine. In response to a former employee, Musk he says there is no evidence that natural plastics harm us; it turns out there is. “Why would we have your home address?” asks a verified user who is concerned that X may do IDF for him; the note indicates that authentication requires an address ID.

And he can’t agree well enough on his own. When one supportive account posts a screenshot proudly proving that X is right because “even Elon Musk can’t be recognized by the public,” Musk responds that the Note on the screenshot is “not right and the public has already voted to stop it.” That earns him another Public Note: no, it’s still there.

Musk likes social notes, unless he doesn’t like them.

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In seven of the 70 spaces, Musk invited him to check it out himself. He invariably tags @CommunityNotes in the tweet he wants to quote, and it’s clear he’s already believed it. In the clear statement he is pushing, he will add a fig leaf by asking “is this true” or “is this accurate?” Almost always, note the results provide context that Musk missed.

Yet Musk rarely responds to invited fact-checking. Once he did, he dug in his heels. “Public Notes fails here,” Musk wrote in February after saying it was impossible to sign in to a Windows PC without a Microsoft account. No, the note in this answer said, you can do it – it just needs a fix that “ordinary Andy” might not know about.

What it’s all about: The tech billionaire who’s been tapping into Windows machines for decades is no ordinary Andy.

And this particular tech billionaire doesn’t get Public Notice like the average Andy would, at least so far. And it doesn’t appear the service will do anything to bring back “Dark MAGA” Musk during the last month before the US election.

Why? Because, like a good public note, we must be aware of the limitations of Public Notes — we use clear language and high-quality sources.

Here’s a deeper discussion of Musk’s claim that “illegal” immigrants are voting in US elections; none of his posts on this subject have been noted. (It’s ironic that Musk himself may have once been an “illegal” immigrant – you’d think smart note writers would be happy to point this out.)

Here’s his response to “he told the real truth” on the antisemitic screed last year. The infamous tweet, advertisers fled, yet it went unnoticed.

Here’s a quote from his “voter fraud in Virginia” report from last week, also unmarked.

We could go on, but you get the point. If the volunteers can’t win over Musk’s low voters to add amendments to this kind of nonsense, there’s very little he can say before election day. the will let’s look at the truth.

Noted.