Community Notes in India: Days ahead of Lok Sabha elections in the country, X, formerly known as Twitter, has announced the expansion of its Community Notes feature to India. The rollout begins on April 4 with the initiation of contributions from Indian users, with plans for additional contributors to be onboarded over time. 

Sharing the news with X users, Elon Musk, the owner of the microblogging platform, posted a tweet. 

What are community notes? 

Community Notes aims to build an informed social media platform by enabling individuals on X to collectively provide context to potentially misleading posts. Contributors have the opportunity to leave notes on any post, and if a sufficient number of contributors from diverse perspectives deem a note helpful, it will be publicly displayed alongside the post. 

As of now, Community Notes are accessible to all users in the United States and with this update, Community Notes will also have Indian users contributing to the overall context of the tweets. 

Elon Musk has hailed Community Notes as the key to transparency on the platform and open-sourced the Community Notes algorithm on GitHub to ensure that anyone can check the algorithm for any biases. The transparency allows for auditing, analysis, and suggestions for improvement by anyone interested in contributing to the process.

Eligibility criteria for becoming a contributor 

Community Notes invites eligible contributors from X and individuals must meet specific criteria, including maintaining a clean record on X since January 1, 2023, and being an active member for at least six months. 

Verification of a trusted phone number adds authenticity to their participation. Contributors initially engage by rating notes, gradually earning the privilege to contribute content. Unlike the majority rule, note selection prioritises helpfulness across diverse perspectives. Importantly, X remains hands-off in content curation, focusing on community-driven direction. 

How to become a community notes contributor in India? 

As X.com has announced that community notes will be accessible to all Indians right before the elections, the platform is inviting users to join the list of contributors on the platform. To join the community notes program, all you will have to do is fulfil the eligibility criteria mentioned above and follow the steps mentioned below. 

• Open your X.com account and go to @CommunityNotes or you can also visit @ElonMusk, who has also retweeted the announcement tweet saying, “Community Notes now active on India!” 
• In the announcement tweet, X informed the users that the first contributors have joined and the community will increase over time. 
• At the bottom of the announcement tweet, you will find a signup link, click on that. 
• A new popup will appear that will check if your account follows the basic requirements of being a contributor, if you fulfil the criteria, click next. 
• After that, you will be required to accept the conditions of being fair and working for the better good of society to proceed further. 
• Once that is done, you will be added to the waiting list of contributors and notified once approved. 

How to contribute to community notes? 

Contributors can add notes by accessing the three-dot menu located on the top right of a post and selecting "Write a Community Note." Following this, they can answer required multiple-choice questions and provide contextual information. These notes will then be accessible on the Community Notes site for other contributors to read and rate.

Notes suggesting that a post may be potentially misleading will be eligible to appear alongside the post if they receive enough positive ratings. Conversely, notes indicating that a post is not misleading will be displayed as additional information but will not be visible alongside the post unless they are rated as helpful.

If a note achieves the status of "Helpful," it will be shown on the relevant post as context, and the contributor responsible for the note will receive Writing Impact. It's important to note that contributors have the option to delete their notes at any time.