Community Notes (formerly known as Birdwatch on X, previously Twitter) is a crowdsourced fact-checking feature that allows users to add contextual notes to posts that may be misleading. The initiative aims to promote transparency and collective moderation. While Community Notes has shown promise in combating misinformation in some English-language contexts, its effectiveness varies greatly across regions and languages, particularly in areas marked by sociopolitical fragmentation and limited content moderation infrastructure.
South Asia represents one such high-risk region. It faces a convergence of factors that make it especially vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation. These include high levels of political polarisation, deep-rooted religious and ethnic divisions, inconsistent digital literacy, and a massive user base generating content in numerous local languages.
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Source: X’s Community Notes and the South Asian Misinformation Crisis