Elon Musk’s Surprising Strategy to Find Truth

Let’s put aside the percentage of people who clicked on this article to be upset and get to the potential for learning. The issues with disinformation in the social media landscape is a well established topic of conversation. That’s not what this article is about. 

This article is about a way forward. 

Observationally, I was intrigued by a new feature on X, the app formerly known as Twitter. The feature is called Community Notes. Community Notes is an open source attempt to fight disinformation. I’m less concerned with Twitter and it’s policies and I’m more interested in methods to get to the truth and this one is interesting. 

Here’s how it works. Let’s say a post that claims to show evidence of political misbehavior. A post like this will have a Community Note underneath the post that provides truthful context in an effort to “fact check” the post. The unique way that X now tries to get to “the truth” is when a person makes a Community Note that is corroborated by other users who typically disagree. 

This is an insurance policy against siloed thinking. 

That last point is key. Naturally, the totalitarian implications of having “Truth Police” is that one camp gets to decide what the truth is, which doesn’t guarantee much except the fact that the “truth” will always be biased. 

It’s actually the friction and challenge of ideas that better ideas emerge. We need to physically rub against opposing opinions for a higher truth to emerge. While social media is far from having truth as its highest aim, this small policy could be a hint at a future of healthy disagreement that we currently lack.