The Community Notes – a fact-checking feature on X – has a new vocal critic, none other than CEO Elon Musk. The fact-checking feature allows users to shine a light on ‘potentially misleading posts’, however, X owner Musk was publicly pointing out its flaw on Sunday.
Musk purchasing a new laptop seemed to start the ball rolling. As he took to X to complain about having to set up a Microsoft account in order to use his new laptop. Musk wrote on X:
“Just bought a new PC laptop and it won’t let me use it unless I create a Microsoft account, which also means giving their AI access to my computer!”
“This is messed up. There used to be an option to skip signing into or creating a Microsoft account.”
However, in true service of fact-checking one user added a Community Note, saying it was possible:
“It is still possible to set up the latest version of Windows without a Microsoft account,” read the note, which linked to a Windows 11 utility guide on the process management platform process.st.”
Musk goes from praising to condemning Community Notes
The utility of Community Notes comes through crowdsourcing. Essentially, anyone who has used X for more than six months has never had their account suspended, and has a verified phone number can apply to be a contributor to Community Notes.
X’s official explanation states: “Contributors can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post,”
Previously, Musk heaped praise on the fact-checking feature on X describing it as ‘awesome’ before adding ‘Our goal is to make Twitter the most accurate source of information on Earth, without regard to political affiliation.’
Musk has even been corrected by Community Notes in the past, after posting a screenshot from a fake CNN story; however chose to praise it then as well. Saying ‘they were right to add the label’ to his tweet.
However, the line appears to have been drawn when it comes to Musk’s critique of competing tech giant Microsoft. After the Community Note was added, Musk chose to critique the fact-checking feature. Writing ‘Community Notes is failing here’ before adding ‘This option no longer exists.’
Hilariously though, Musk’s post stating that the feature wasn’t working from X received another Community Note.
