Community Notes Update Aims to Address Criticisms and Enhance User Experience

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has announced a significant update to its crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes. The new feature, which is not yet live, will send users direct messages (DMs) when a post they have interacted with has received a correction. This update aims to address one of the biggest criticisms about Community Notes, which is that corrections often arrive too late to matter.

A misleading post can accumulate views and reposts while its accuracy is disputed, and by the time it’s corrected, the damage has been done. By proactively notifying users when a post receives a correction, X is trying to extend the reach of the note beyond the original post. This could also allow users who spread false information to issue their own mea culpa, if they had been duped.

The update was announced by X owner Elon Musk on July 8, 2026, via a tweet that read: ‘We will be releasing a new @CommunityNotes feature that sends you an X Chat message if a post you interacted with is corrected.’

Community Notes was first established when the company was still known as Twitter, before Musk’s acquisition. The idea was to introduce a different way to address misinformation on the platform, rather than requiring Twitter (now X) to be the centralized authority for moderation decisions. Instead, Community Notes contributors could suggest corrections and add critical details or missing information to posts. Consensus is achieved when people who rate the note as helpful are those who typically have different perspectives, and the note goes live.

A similar system has since been adopted by Meta as part of its broader moderation overhaul last year, which saw the company eliminate its partnerships with fact-checkers. Though Community Notes makes sense for a company that wants to distance itself from the business of fact-checking, it’s also proven difficult to scale. A 2025 study of the feature by Spanish fact-checking site Maldita found that 85% of the proposed notes on X remain invisible to users, and only 8.3% get published and become visible. A separate study conducted by the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), which encompassed 1.76 million notes published on X between January 2021 and March 2025, put the figure for unpublished notes even higher at 90%.

This weakens Community Notes as a system that surfaces information when it’s most needed, critics have pointed out. Plus, they’ve argued, people aren’t aware when a post they saw or boosted receives a correction later on, as there’s been no way to bring that information to their attention. Musk’s proposal to send users alerts via X Chat (DMs) would address the latter issue, at least, assuming it goes live.

X was asked for comment, but a response was not immediately available. The update is expected to be rolled out in the near future, although no specific time frame has been shared by Musk or the company.

Community Notes: A Crowdsourced Fact-Checking System

Community Notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking system that allows users to suggest corrections and add critical details or missing information to posts. The system relies on consensus, achieved when people who rate the note as helpful are those who typically have different perspectives, and the note goes live. The idea behind Community Notes is to introduce a different way to address misinformation on the platform, rather than requiring Twitter (now X) to be the centralized authority for moderation decisions.

The system has been adopted by Meta as part of its broader moderation overhaul last year, which saw the company eliminate its partnerships with fact-checkers. However, Community Notes has proven difficult to scale, with a 2025 study by Spanish fact-checking site Maldita finding that 85% of the proposed notes on X remain invisible to users, and only 8.3% get published and become visible.

A separate study conducted by the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), which encompassed 1.76 million notes published on X between January 2021 and March 2025, put the figure for unpublished notes even higher at 90%. This weakens Community Notes as a system that surfaces information when it’s most needed, critics have pointed out.