Facebook, Instagram, and Threads start testing Community Notes next week

Meta will begin testing its X-style Community Notes starting March 18th. The feature will roll out on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the US – but Meta won’t publicly publish the notes to start as it tests the Community Notes writing and rating system.

Meta first announced plans to replace its fact-checking program with Community Notes in January, saying it would be “less prone to bias.” So far, around 200,000 potential contributors have signed up for the waitlist. Not everyone will be able to write and rate Community Notes at launch, as the company will “gradually and randomly” admit contributors to the program.

In its post, Meta revealed that it’s adopting X’s approach to Community Notes, allowing contributors to write and rate notes, which “won’t be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them.” It’s also using X’s open-source algorithm for its rating system.

“When we launched the fact checking program in 2016, we were clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth and believed that turning to expert fact checking organizations was the best solution available,” Meta writes. “But that’s not how it played out, particularly in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own political biases and perspectives.”

Additionally, Meta says Community Notes will have a limit of 500 characters, and will need to include a link backing them up. Once Community Notes become visible to users, they won’t have author names attached to them to start. “We want notes to be rated based on whether the context they add is helpful, not on who wrote them,” Meta writes.

To contribute to Community Notes, users must be over 18, have an account in good standing over six months old, and have a verified phone number or two-factor authentication. Contributors also won’t be able to write notes on advertisements at launch, but they can still add them to “almost any other forms of content,” such as posts from Meta and its executives, politicians, and more. Community Notes will be available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Portuguese.

Meta will still use its third-party fact-checking system outside the US, though it plans to expand Community Notes globally in the future.