The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 20 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Baxter: Bridging agreement between polarized users ensures accuracy and neutrality
“I think the key thing really that we do is we actually look for agreement from people who have disagreed in the past. And what we see is when people actually have that sort of surprising agreement, that's what makes the notes so neutral and accurate and well w…”
Baxter: Bridging algorithms enable crowdsourced moderation without external fact-checker labels
“If you said I think like back in 2020, before we started building anything here, whether this could work at all, I think a room of ML engineers would say, oh, you have to keep it closed source. You know, people are going to be manipulating this all the time. Y…”
Baxter: Research shows crowdsourced lay fact-checkers match professional fact-checkers
“There was, you know, original research you know, before, before birdwatch even started or community notes even started from external researchers showing that, you know, crowdsource fact checkers can do, you know, lay people can do about as well as Fact checker…”
Baxter: Independent studies show Community Notes change user belief in claims
“Actually, there have been external studies, you know, run by people totally independent of us who have found that if you take a community note or a post with or without a community note, that actually people's agreement with the core claims in the post does ch…”
Baxter: X core ranking algorithm does not demote noted posts
“Although we don't actually use the fact that a post was noted in the core ranking algorithm”
Baxter: Corporate OKR planning took longer than completing entire goals
“The whole OKR determination and planning process took longer than it would take us to pick a goal and then execute it on it and finish it.”
Baxter: Community Notes' initial PageRank algorithm amplified majority bias
“The actual first algorithm that I put into production was very focused on anti manipulation. It was this kind of page rank variant but it didn't solve the problem of, you know, bias basically. So if there are some, if there are more users on one side, the, a p…”
Baxter: Google Docs beats Asana by letting irrelevant tasks fade naturally
“My memory of it is that it spent, you spent more time in the meeting grooming a backlog of irrelevant stuff than actually, you know, talking about the proper priorities. So I think it's nice in the Google doc that if something becomes irrelevant, it can kind o…”
Baxter: Engineers add permanent maintenance burdens for minor A/B test wins
“Engineers have a tendency to add these little incremental wins that actually ha add. You know, more of a long-term maintenance cost than is clear because you just run a little one month, AB test. You see this, you know, significant when they don't realize the …”
Baxter: X simplified its systems by deleting code after major layoffs
“So I think we did have to do this across the company after the big way offs and you know, systems are leaner now and they can be worked on by fewer numbers of people.”
Baxter: Community Notes provides missing context rather than traditional fact-checking
“One distinction that I would make, which may maybe can come off as nitpicky, but I think is important is community notes adds additional context. It's not fact checking necessarily. So So there are cases where the post could be true, but maybe it's just mislea…”
Baxter: Zero-click, specific in-feed context is essential for fact-checking
“So, so pulling the context up, you know, so that you have zero clicks that you need to make and keeping it specific is so important.”
Baxter: Community Notes algorithm stops counting ratings from consensus-violating users
“I would also say there is this reputation component to the algorithm as well. So if you consistently rate notes in a way that is counter to the bridging based consensus, then we'll stop counting your ratings, right? So you know, if you're the kind of person wh…”
Baxter: Notes drop likes and reposts by 30% to 40% in internal A/B tests
“We saw more like 30 to 40% engagement rate drops for likes and reposts and an AB test we ran. When comparing showing a post with or without a note”
Baxter: External studies show Community Notes reduce total reposts by 50% to 60%
“Multiple different external research groups have both found consistently that There's like a 50 or 60% drop in total reposts, which is just nuts after a node is applied.”
Baxter: Authors are 80% more likely to delete posts after receiving a Community Note
“Authors become 80% more likely to decrease, or sorry, to delete their post after they get noted.”
Baxter: Directly attaching notes to posts penetrates online echo chambers
“The fact that the note applies is directly attached to the post and visible by anyone who sees the post helps, you know, cross the, those filter bubbles and can kind of I think for some people it's the first time they've actually seen counter arguments to, you…”
Baxter: Running Community Notes locally takes 500GB RAM and roughly one day
“Oh, like, 500 gigs. It'll take like a day if you don't do anything special to speed it up.”