Media Social Media and Updates

Early “Misleading” Button Boosts Norm‑Driven Fact‑Checking Impact

Community-based fact-checking is a promising approach to correct misleading posts. Exposing users to community notes reduces the subsequent spread of misleading posts by 61.2% (an increase the odds that users delete their misleading posts by 94.3%) Although community notes are effective in reducing the spread of posts once annotated, they usually appear too late to intervene in the early and most viral stage of the diffusion. As a result, their system-wide effect is modest. This is based on an analysis of 237,180 community fact-checked cascades reposted more than 431 million times https://t.co/OxFrUDo9kZ One reason I think they are effective is because they harness social norms--if other people *like me* find the comment misleading that is often more compelling that a simple fact check. We found that a more effective strategy might be adding a "misleading" button right on social media posts. This allows people to see social norms much faster (before content goes viral). This is 5X more effective than other strategies for fighting misinformation and does not require fact-checkers or official content moderation. In additional, it works really well for polarizing content--which community notes struggle to stop. https://t.co/2G6OXH89ER