Community Notes are Vulnerable to Rater Bias and Manipulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Truong, Bao Tran, Wu, Siqi, Flammini, Alessandro, Menczer, Filippo, Stewart, Alexander J.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Truong, Bao Tran
Wu, Siqi
Flammini, Alessandro
Menczer, Filippo
Stewart, Alexander J.
author_facet Truong, Bao Tran
Wu, Siqi
Flammini, Alessandro
Menczer, Filippo
Stewart, Alexander J.
contents Social media platforms increasingly rely on crowdsourced moderation systems like Community Notes to combat misinformation at scale. However, these systems face challenges from rater bias and potential manipulation, which may undermine their effectiveness. Here we systematically evaluate the Community Notes algorithm using simulated data that models realistic rater and note behaviors, quantifying error rates in publishing helpful versus unhelpful notes. We find that the algorithm suppresses a substantial fraction of genuinely helpful notes and is highly sensitive to rater biases, including polarization and in-group preferences. Moreover, a small minority (5--20\%) of bad raters can strategically suppress targeted helpful notes, effectively censoring reliable information. These findings suggest that while community-driven moderation may offer scalability, its vulnerability to bias and manipulation raises concerns about reliability and trustworthiness, highlighting the need for improved mechanisms to safeguard the integrity of crowdsourced fact-checking.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_02615
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Community Notes are Vulnerable to Rater Bias and Manipulation
Truong, Bao Tran
Wu, Siqi
Flammini, Alessandro
Menczer, Filippo
Stewart, Alexander J.
Social and Information Networks
Computers and Society
Social media platforms increasingly rely on crowdsourced moderation systems like Community Notes to combat misinformation at scale. However, these systems face challenges from rater bias and potential manipulation, which may undermine their effectiveness. Here we systematically evaluate the Community Notes algorithm using simulated data that models realistic rater and note behaviors, quantifying error rates in publishing helpful versus unhelpful notes. We find that the algorithm suppresses a substantial fraction of genuinely helpful notes and is highly sensitive to rater biases, including polarization and in-group preferences. Moreover, a small minority (5--20\%) of bad raters can strategically suppress targeted helpful notes, effectively censoring reliable information. These findings suggest that while community-driven moderation may offer scalability, its vulnerability to bias and manipulation raises concerns about reliability and trustworthiness, highlighting the need for improved mechanisms to safeguard the integrity of crowdsourced fact-checking.
title Community Notes are Vulnerable to Rater Bias and Manipulation
topic Social and Information Networks
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02615