The Community Notes feature on X is being used to challenge claims made in ads by Apple, Samsung, Uber, and others.
A report says that this is adding another barrier to the willingness of major brands to advertise on the troubled platform …
Background
A number of controversial things happened when Musk first took control of the social network then known as Twitter.
The majority of engineers either resigned or were fired; virtually the entire exec team responsible for blocking hate speech and disinformation was removed; the CSAM team appeared to have been reduced to a single person; account verification without verification was made available for sale; copyright infringement detection failed; the COVID-19 disinformation policy was abandoned; and previously banned and suspended accounts were reinstated.
That led major brands – including Apple – to either suspend or dramatically reduce their ad spend on the platform.
Since then, Musk and his new CEO and former NBCUniversal advertising exec Linda Yaccarino have been trying to win back advertisers – but now a new problem has hit.
X Community Notes being used to attack ads
One of the features designed to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform is Community Notes. Anyone can fact-check a post, and if enough people upvote it, then their note will be appended to the original post.
The WSJ reports that Apple is one of several major brands to find its ad claims challenged in these notes.
Major brands including Apple and Samsung have had critical notes attached to ads […]
In August, an Apple ad promoting the sustainability of the iPhone received a Community Note alleging that Apple intentionally slows down older phone models to encourage sales. The note cited a 2020 lawsuit on the subject that was settled for up to $500 million.
The note later disappeared, however, after the number of volunteers labeling it unhelpful crossed an internal threshold, according to a screenshot provided by a current member of the program.
“Don’t abuse Community Notes to ‘get back’ on companies you don’t like,” read a subsequent message from one member to those who had criticized the ad.
X says that it responded by raising the threshold for Community Notes to appear. Now, more users will need to mark it as helpful before it is appended to the post.
Apple declined to comment on the issue.
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