[HN Gopher] The Making of Community Notes (2024)
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       The Making of Community Notes (2024)
        
       Author : chambers
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2025-01-20 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (asteriskmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
        
       | yodsanklai wrote:
       | It's a very interesting design space. How to design public forums
       | where people can share ideas and eventually improve their
       | knowledge collectively.
       | 
       | There are very successful instances of that, for instance
       | MathOverflow.
       | 
       | But I don't know what can be achieved when a good chunk of
       | participants don't agree on some basic rules beforehand, such as
       | logic and good faith. It's a bit like consensus with byzantine
       | failures, maybe there's an impossibility theorem here and large
       | social network should be limited to cat videos.
        
       | derbOac wrote:
       | It's a useful piece, thanks for posting it.
       | 
       | Flagging of misinformation has become a controversial topic but
       | for me personally it strikes me as odd to even do such a thing at
       | all. Or rather, if there's a need for such a system it suggests
       | the platform has already failed, in that people are not able to
       | use it discerningly, whether because of the posters, readers,
       | system, or some interaction thereof. If they are able to do so,
       | why have it?
       | 
       | I've posted this elsewhere but the nature of community notes
       | makes it a bit murkier. If Platform A introduces misinformation
       | flags, you can always compartmentalize it as the platform
       | inserting itself into the conversation one way or another, but
       | with something like community notes, you're left wondering at
       | some level "what happened here?" in a way that's similar to
       | upvotes or downvotes.
       | 
       | The point about people trusting community notes I'm not sure what
       | to do with either. Other studies I've seen cited elsewhere
       | suggest that there's a very high false negative rate, so are they
       | doing what they're supposed to? How are people interpreting the
       | unflagged posts?
       | 
       | The whole thing seems well-intended at some level but also
       | missing the forest for the trees or something. I don't want
       | community notes or misinformation flags, I just want discourse
       | and I want to be able to ignore certain sources of posts and be
       | more exposed to others.
       | 
       | It's an interesting idea and I'm not even sure I'm objecting to
       | its implementation. I guess it's more so that I feel like there's
       | an overconfidence in all of the misinformation flagging methods,
       | and this overconfidence is maybe taking attention away from more
       | serious problems, like how people consume and evaluate
       | information, or how information networks are being controlled.
        
         | antidamage wrote:
         | Depending on the subject, CN is frequently a second vector for
         | disinformation now as well. Posts that are clearly
         | disinformation, from the right account, almost seem to have
         | their supporting CNs lined up in advance. It feels a little
         | organised, or at least a bit pretend-stochastic.
         | 
         | Overall CNs are still working but if you're exposed to the pre-
         | helpful stage notes it can either be frustrating or confusing.
        
         | _DeadFred_ wrote:
         | Please link to studies when referenced. Otherwise is just seems
         | like an appeal to authority especially as your post is very
         | anti the topic discussed.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-20 23:02 UTC)