Both professional fact-checkers and Community Notes have a pretty low false-positive rate.
It's the false negatives that are the differentiator, but false negatives are by definition invisible to the user.
When you evaluate moderation as a "product" you place more weight on factors that are mostly losers for third-party fact checkers and winners for Community Notes: speed and annoying tone.
But since false negatives are never seen, there's no visible "product" to be annoyed by. Sure, the platform fills up with even more disinfo, but users blame that on other user, not the moderation "product".
And this is where Community Notes fails. Because Notes require consensus from multiple groups with histories of diverse ideological perspectives, when one perspective has an interest in propagating disinfo, no Community Note appears.
Some studies show something like 75% of clear disinfo doesn't get a Community Note on X when it involves a hot partisan shibboleth.
False negatives are mostly invisible failures that make the entire platform worse, but the user can't blame it on a "product" because it's really the absence of a product that's the problem.
It's the false negatives that are the differentiator, but false negatives are by definition invisible to the user.
When you evaluate moderation as a "product" you place more weight on factors that are mostly losers for third-party fact checkers and winners for Community Notes: speed and annoying tone.
But since false negatives are never seen, there's no visible "product" to be annoyed by. Sure, the platform fills up with even more disinfo, but users blame that on other user, not the moderation "product".
And this is where Community Notes fails. Because Notes require consensus from multiple groups with histories of diverse ideological perspectives, when one perspective has an interest in propagating disinfo, no Community Note appears.
Some studies show something like 75% of clear disinfo doesn't get a Community Note on X when it involves a hot partisan shibboleth.
False negatives are mostly invisible failures that make the entire platform worse, but the user can't blame it on a "product" because it's really the absence of a product that's the problem.