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Has Twitter discovered a better way of correcting online falsehoods?

The strength of the platform’s Community Notes feature is that it works through consensus.

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Community Notes is a feature that allows users to “add context” below other people’s tweets.

Community Notes is a feature that allows users to “add context” below other people’s tweets.

PHOTO: REUTERS

Jemima Kelly

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I think I might have let out an audible groan in November when I saw Elon Musk proclaiming that his mission was to make Twitter “by far the most accurate source of information about the world”.

This is a man, after all, who has not in the past shown a particularly ardent commitment to the truth. In 2018, in a now infamous tweet, Mr Musk said

he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private

(a deal that never materialised). And in 2020, he tweeted that children were “essentially immune” from Covid-19 (this turned out to be false).

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