The company formerly known as Twitter is giving Community Notes writers another tool to keep users accountable, but I worry it could be used to unnecessarily shame other people.
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If you add a Community Post to a post on X (formerly Twitter), X will tell you if the person who wrote the post deletes it, the company said on Friday.
“Contributors consistently say their goal is to keep others well-informed,” X wrote on the Community Notes account. “This can happen when a helpful note appears on a post, and also when an erroneous post gets deleted. Starting today, writers will be notified when a post on which they wrote a note gets deleted.”
The idea here seems to be to give people with the ability to add Community Notes another tool to keep other users accountable. On one hand, I think this could be really useful; writing about deleted posts is a key aspect of my job. But on the other, given the generally-bad vibes on X, I worry this tool may be abused to shame people who delete their posts over minor errors or factual inaccuracies.
This new Community Notes feature is the second that X has added this week. On Tuesday, X announced that people rating a note will see more note proposals so they can “consider other notes before submitting their rating.” X owner Elon Musk is a big advocate for Community Notes, and the feature has gotten some notable updates, including expansions to images and videos, since he took over the company.
