Featured Research: Community-Based Fact-Checking Reduces the Spread of Misleading Posts on Social Media
Social media platforms increasingly rely on community-based fact-checking systems such as X’s Community Notes to combat misinformation at scale. In this study, we analyze more than 431 million reposts across 237,180 fact-checked cascades and provide large-scale causal evidence that community notes reduce the subsequent spread of misleading posts by 61.2% on average. We further find that community notes increase the likelihood that users delete misleading posts by 94.3%. However, notes often appear too late to prevent the early, most viral stage of diffusion, limiting their overall system-wide impact. Our findings highlight both the promise and current limitations of community-based fact-checking systems in reducing misinformation on social media.
- Research paper at Nature Communications (open access)
- Interview with FAZ
- Media Coverage (selection): The Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, ABC News, Poynter, BBC