Keith: A recent study was done that shows that, indeed, people do trust notes that are written specifically about the posts they're on with details about the topic more than the classic misinformation flags — which is awesome. And, yes, it was one of our early design guesses. One of the working assumptions was that, if you could add context to the statements made in a post or a tweet, people would be better informed than if it was just some kind of generic statement. All the initial prototypes depicted very specific notes that were dealing specifically with the post in question. We showed these prototypes to hundreds of people across the political spectrum, and it consistently came up that they appreciated the specificity with which the notes dealt with the content of the post, and they appreciated that they had sources — which they all did.
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Asterisk: Can you explain how it works?
Jay: The main rating action is that we ask people whether they found a note helpful or not. Then, we look at people's rating histories on previous notes. What the algorithm does is find notes where people who've disagreed on their ratings in the past actually agree that a particular note is helpful. That's not explicitly defined based on any political axis — it's purely based on people's voting histories. And this mechanism results in very accurate notes because, when you do have political polarization among people who've disagreed substantially, they really tend to only agree that notes are helpful when the notes are also very accurate.
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Jay: Obviously, if raters who disagreed in the past can't find a note that they agree on, then no note shows. You could argue that maybe there should be a note in those cases, but maybe these aren't cases where it's possible to change people's minds with that note. Maybe a better note could be written that would change more people's minds, but if the existing note is not finding bridging-based agreement, this means there's a limit to its usefulness.
That said, I find that we still see a reasonable number of notes on even the most polarizing things. Often these notes are on quite objective things, like: “this is a video of a bombing from two years ago, not the current conflict.” Even people who really disagree on most things can often agree on notes like that.
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[...] it became clear that notes shouldn't really stand on the author's reputation. The notes should stand on their own. You should be able to read the note, and it should give you the information and cite the sources needed for you to get what you want from it. It was much more powerful to do that than to try to rest it on one individual's identity. It was a surprise to us. In hindsight, it seems kind of obvious that it's better, but it was not our initial instinct.
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The scoring — that is, the frequency at which we can score — used to be three to five hours, and it's soon going to be in the minutes.
This means notes can now go live within minutes of being written and rated. And then, you have to compare that to the alternatives. It's extremely common to see professional fact checks take multiple days.
From the interview:
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