Twitter Community Notes are a "really bad idea" and "just a fancy word for fact checking" according to a recent tweet by Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovksi on Saturday.
The new Twitter feature allows, according to the website, a crowdsourced series of users to "create a better informed world by empowering people on Twitter to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading Tweets." While the feature has gotten positive feedback from many users, Pavlovski pushed back against them, claiming they will inevitably do more harm than good.
"Community notes on Twitter is a really bad idea. It's a fancy word for fact checking, which will eventually be gamed, hijacked and/or cause more harm than good. I've seen this story too often and I won’t let it happen on Rumble," Pavlovski tweeted.
Pavlovski's comment itself received a Community Note regarding the process of a tweet receiving one.
"All Twitter accounts must meet the eligibility criteria. Second for a note to be shown on a Tweet, it needs to be found helpful by people who have tended to disagree in past ratings. Lastly, Notes tracks metrics that alert the team if suspicious activity is detected," the note read.
"Looks like my opinion above needs context by community notes," Pavlovski remarked on Sunday.
He later added, "In my case they added a Community Note to my opinion on Community Notes. Forceable intrusion of my speech under the disguise of adding ‘context’, is a form of censorship. My speech/opinion is being altered to defend Community Notes. This isn't free speech in any sense."
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Pavlovski’s original tweet also received pushback from Twitter users who approved of the feature.
"Community Notes is one of the best things to happen on Twitter. It holds professional liars and gaslighters accountable," Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell wrote.
Author John Hawkins commented, "You may turn out to be right, but so far, so good. Out of all the Community Notes I've seen so far, there's only one I think was inaccurate and it was non-political. I'd say the same ‘fact check’ error rate is probably 1 out of 5 or 1 out of 6. At this point, I'd just say..."
"Yeah except it keeps on being accurate," attorney Matt Bilinsky tweeted.
Internet Accountability Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain argued, "Yeah I couldn’t disagree with this take more; Weak, partisan ‘fact-checks’ don’t get past the helpfulness filter; The ones that get through are dispassionate takedowns of false/misleading tweets."
"I'm no fan of fact-checking, but attempting to refute so-called "misinformation" is far better than removing or suppressing it," Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon remarked.
Attorney Damin Toell joked, "I’m being censored by Rumble. So much for the pro-free-speech right!" after being blocked by Pavlovski.
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Pavlovski was later asked about the proper alternative beyond fact checkers or Community Notes.
"I’m opposed to any arbiter/ministry of truth. I’m for the free flow of ideas, in public, for everyone to see and debate. The internet survived just fine for two decades without any ministry of truth," Pavlovski explained.
