When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of the third-party fact-checking program on his company’s platforms, he said he would “get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes, similar to X.” Now, as Meta begins testing Community Notes in the United States across Facebook, Instagram and Threads, a new study shows that fact-checkers remain an essential part of X’s program. 

The study, conducted by Spanish fact-checking site Maldita, ranked professional fact-checkers among the three most cited sources on Community Notes, a feature on X that lets users add context to misleading posts. The top sources also include other posts on X and Wikipedia. The study also found that users trust notes citing an accredited organization more, helping them appear faster on misleading posts and allowing misinformation to be addressed before it spreads further.

“The evidence from X clearly shows that users frequently rely on fact-checking organizations when proposing Community Notes,” said the study’s report, which analyzed nearly 1.2 million notes written globally in 2024, including proposed ones.

Community Notes’ reliance on organizations certified by the International Fact-Checking Network and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network is “an impressive demonstration of trust by X users,” especially given that Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, is “so intent on destroying our credibility at every step,” said Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, the report’s lead author, in an email interview.

“The study shows a clear underlying appreciation and trust for the usefulness of the work of fact-checking organizations and further demonstrates that, one, ‘crowdsourced’ fact-checking cannot really be effective without professional fact-checking organizations, and two, crowdsourced detection is useful, but professional, methodological, standardized collaboration is essential alongside it,” Hernández-Echevarría said.

Despite the higher trust in community notes citing fact checks, 85% of notes remain invisible to users on X, according to the report. On average, only 8.3% of proposed notes become visible, rising to as much as 15.2% when linked to a verification organization.

The reason for the low visibility rate is that Community Notes requires agreement among users with different political views before a note is shown. Maldita’s study recommends that platforms revise or, in Meta’s case, select a lower threshold of agreement to prioritize factual accuracy.

That agreement requirement weakens Community Notes’ ability to surface accurate information when it is most needed, said Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studies the fact-checking movement worldwide. “Even on X, users participating in the Community Notes program clearly rely heavily on fact-checking. But at the same time, the structure of the program actually prevents many notes that bring professional fact checks into the conversation from becoming visible,” Graves said. 

Graves noted that as platforms like YouTube and Meta consider adopting Community Notes-style systems, the focus should shift to designing them in ways that encourage reliance on professionally vetted information, including contributions from fact-checkers. However, the decline of direct partnerships between platforms and fact-checkers remains a major setback, because those collaborations have historically been a more effective way to combat viral misinformation, he said.

For MediaWise director Alex Mahadevan, who has studied Community Notes’ evolution from Birdwatch, the main takeaway is that real fact-checkers are essential to both the speed and scale of crowdsourced fact-checking. 

“If these companies truly care about addressing misinformation at scale, they should include professional fact-checkers in conversations about these trust and safety experiments,” he said.

Hernández-Echevarría, who heads public policy at Maldita, said Community Notes that cite evidence from fact-checkers appear 90 minutes earlier than general notes, giving platforms a better chance to address misinformation before it spreads. The study also found notes citing certified organizations are proposed 23 minutes faster and become visible 24 minutes earlier than the median note…

(Maldita cautions Meta is repeating X’s Community Notes mistakes as it ends the fact-checking program in the U.S. Critics argue the crowdsourced approach lacks transparency, allows unchecked misinformation in ads, and ignores lessons from X's struggles.)

Continue reading the story on Poynter.org. 

                        Cover for the last State of the Fact-Checkers report. (Chris Kozlowski/poynter.)

Ahead of International Fact-Checking Day on April 2, the International Fact-Checking Network will present the annual “State of the Fact-Checkers” report during a webinar on Monday, March 31, at 10 a.m. Eastern. The report offers the last snapshot of global fact-checking before major industry disruptions earlier this year, including the end of Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.

IFCN Director Angie Drobnic Holan will moderate the 60-minute session. Enock Nyariki (IFCN) will present key findings, followed by a discussion with panelists Olivia Sohr (Chequeado of Argentina) and Ana Brakus (Faktograf of Croatia). The session will include a Q&A segment and cover financial sustainability, artificial intelligence, harassment, cyberattacks, and key trends shaping the global fact-checking community. 

The full report, based on insights from 141 organizations in 67 countries, will be published after the webinar concludes. 

Register here for the Zoom event.

Quick Hits

• Fact-checkers across Africa face increasing harassment and funding cuts after Meta ended its fact-checking partnerships, beginning in the U.S., writes Nieman Fellow James Okong'o. Reduced efforts could expose communities to dangerous political propaganda in Ethiopia and harmful health misinformation in Nigeria.
• ABC News Australia reports fewer fact-checkers now monitor politicians as Meta ends its partnerships with independent fact-checkers. 
• Reuters Institute reports Trump’s USAID cuts severely cripple journalism worldwide. Media in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa face deep reductions, endangering investigative journalism and press freedom.
• A new study from researchers in India warns that COVID-19 misinformation significantly increased deaths, citing 800 Iranian fatalities from methanol poisoning. Researchers say the pandemic heightened misinformation awareness but also deepened distrust in science and authorities.
• Baybars Orsek of Logically Facts argues that future fact-checking must combine AI tools with expert journalism. He cautions that platforms like Meta, which are shifting toward crowdsourced systems such as Community Notes, risk sacrificing accuracy, accountability, and effectiveness in combating misinformation.