X's Community Notes feature, a crowdsourced system for adding context to potentially misleading posts, has significantly expanded its global reach to 200 countries. This development underscores the platform's commitment to community-driven moderation and has garnered considerable attention, as highlighted by recent social media discussions. The program, initially known as Birdwatch, aims to empower users to collaboratively combat misinformation by providing helpful and informative context.
Launched in 2021 and rebranded in 2022, Community Notes operates on a "bridging algorithm" that requires consensus from contributors with diverse viewpoints for a note to be publicly displayed. This mechanism is designed to ensure objectivity and prevent partisan manipulation. X states that posts with a Community Note see a significant reduction in virality, with resharing dropping by 50-60%.
In a notable advancement, X is piloting a program to integrate AI-generated notes into the system, allowing large language models, including X's own Grok, to submit notes for peer review. This initiative, which began in July 2025, seeks to increase the speed and scale of fact-checking. Additionally, X is experimenting with using Community Notes to identify and highlight posts that resonate broadly across different user perspectives.
The success and model of X's Community Notes have inspired other major social media platforms. Meta, for instance, announced in March 2025 that it would replace its third-party fact-checking program with its own version of Community Notes across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the U.S., leveraging X's open-source algorithm. YouTube is also reportedly testing a similar feature, signaling a broader industry shift towards crowdsourced content moderation.
Despite its expansion and influence, the Community Notes system faces challenges. A study analyzing data up to March 2025 revealed that over 90% of proposed notes are never published, often due to the time it takes for notes to go live, which averaged 14 days in 2025. Critics argue this pace is too slow for viral misinformation. Nonetheless, X continues to refine the program, emphasizing community participation as a core strategy for content integrity.