X is making a significant change to its crowd-sourced fact checking tool in an attempt to stem the flow of misinformation on its platform. The new rule is one that will be familiar to professional fact checkers, academics and Wikipedia editors, but is nonetheless new to X’s approach to fact-checking: the company will now require its volunteer contributors to include sources on every community note they write.The company announced the change in a post on X, shortly after Wired reported that some community notes contributors are worried the tool is being manipulated by bad actors and worsening X’s misinformation problems amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. “Starting today, sources are now required for proposed notes,” the company wrote. “We haven’t previously required this, as some helpful notes inherently do not need sources – for example, they refer to details of the post or media it contains. But those instances are less common, and we believe the overall impact of this change will be positive.”
Origen: X now requires community fact checks to include sources
