X\’s Community Notes in limbo: Study finds over 90% remain unpublished.

Major Gap in X’s Community Notes Publishing

Study Finds 90% of Verification Notes Never Published

Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA) performed the largest audit of X’s Community Notes, examining 1.76 million notes from January 2021 to March 2025.

• English notes had a 4.9% publication rate in early 2025, down from 9.5% in 2023.
• Spanish notes improved, growing from 3.6% to 7.1% over the same period.
• The bottleneck largely results from a lack of consensus during user ratings.
• Following Linda Yaccarino’s resignation after two years as CEO, the platform’s moderation model faces heightened scrutiny.

Community Moderation Model Explained

X’s crowd‑sourced verification system allows volunteers to propose notes that add context or corrections to posts. Other users then rate these notes as “helpful” or “not helpful.” If a note receives enough helpful ratings from a diverse user base, it is published, appearing beneath the challenged post.

Key Takeaway

For a program marketed as fast, scalable, and transparent, the fact that more than 90% of submitted notes never reach the public should raise serious concerns about its effectiveness as a debunking tool.

b) Evolving Platforms Shift Toward Community‑Led Moderation

The emerging trend sees tech giants leaning into a model where community participants spearhead content reviews. This shift promises a balance between expert fact‑checking and grassroots vigilance.

Key Insights from the Latest Report

• Unseen Volume: Thousands of notes slip through without assessment, hinting at a bottleneck that grows more pronounced as contributor numbers swell.
• English Bottleneck: The study highlighted that behaviors in English, where users submit a higher quantity, expose the system’s internal visibility limits.
• Latent Cascade: Despite a rise in note creators, many posts remain trapped, unseen, and ungiven the essential step to publication.

Bot‑Like Account Emerges as Top Contributor

• Crypto Scam Oversight: DDIA researchers named an automated account as the most prolific English contributor, pushing 43,000 notes from 2021 to March 2025.
• Live Rate: Only 3.1% of those posts reached live status, suggesting most notes were either ignored or failed to secure consensus.
• Speed Gains: The average time for a note to live dropped from over 100 days in 2022 to a mere 14 days in 2025.
• Fast Still Lagging: Even the accelerated timeline falls short for viral misinformation, toxic content, or real‑time event errors that spread within hours.

Implications for the Community‑Driven Model

As platforms adopt this community‑led approach, it presents an alternative to professional fact‑checking—a system critics in countries such as the United States argue carries a liberal bias.

• Strengths: Community Notes can counter certain falsehoods, like vaccine misinformation, especially where consensus exists.
• Limitations: The strategy falters when partisan motivations surface, targeting political adversaries.
• Outlook: The necessity for real‑time accuracy underscores the urgency of faster, more reliable moderation.

Recent Corporate Milestones

X introduced Community Notes under Yaccarino’s leadership. She announced her resignation, stepping down after a period of significant transformation.

Meanwhile, Musk’s AI chatbot Grok sparked controversy over anti‑Semitic remarks praising Adolf Hitler and insulting Islam in separate posts on X, igniting an online firestorm.