This, in turn, will limit the efficacy of community notes, particularly for high-stakes claims related to health and broader conspiracy narratives.

Work done with @gretawarren.bsky.social, @delliott.bsky.social, and @iaugenstein.bsky.social.

Fact-checkers conduct in-depth research beyond the reach of amateur users, while community notes publicise their work. The move to end partnerships and funding for fact-checking agencies will hinder their ability to pursue investigative journalism, which community note writers rely on.

This work examines how this recent development might impact the efforts to combat misinformation spread on social media by studying fact-checking’s role in Twitter’s community notes.

We find that community notes and professional fact-checking are deeply interconnected:

The current political climate has prompted Meta to shift away from partnerships with fact-checkers to increased reliance on crowdsourced community notes—the model used by Twitter.