Meta will be testing Community Notes, seen on X, on all of their major social media platforms, and the process will begin on the 18th of March.
In January, Meta announced on its blog that they would be ending “third-party fact-checking” and instead move to crowd-sourced Community Notes, beginning in the US. Contributors will be able to write and rate notes across Instagram, Facebook and Threads.
According to Meta, 200,000 potential contributors have signed up to test the feature across all three apps, and the waitlist is still open for more people to join.
How will the Community Notes work?
Meta explained they’d be taking a very similar approach to X, where contributors from the community will “decide what gets rated or written.”
“To safeguard against bias, notes won’t be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them.
“This isn’t majority rules. No matter how many contributors agree on a note, it won’t be published unless people who normally disagree decide that it provides helpful context,” Meta wrote.
What will Community Notes look like?
The blog outlined that Community Notes will have a limit of 500 characters and will need to include a link to support the note.
Furthermore, author names will be hidden to prevent bias, and authors must be over 18. They also will need an account that is older than 6 months and has a verified phone number.
How will this affect influencer marketers?
To begin, contributors will not be able to submit notes on any ads, meaning if an influencer is promoting a product with a #ad, the Community Notes feature won’t be available.
Users will, however, be able to comment on almost any other form of content, no matter if it’s a celebrity post, a politician, a meme account, or a brand.
This means influencers should be cautious about providing transparency and clearly labelling when they are creating sponsored content or advertising products.
Meta has also reassured that posts with fact-checker Community Notes will not be hidden or reduced in feeds or on the explore page.
We can only wait and see what impact the Community Notes feature will have on Meta platforms.
