Twitter’s “Community Notes” system was designed “to create a better-informed world, by empowering people on X to collaboratively add helpful notes to posts that might be misleading“. The additions can be humourous and useful. Guido has crunched the numbers, though, and along with a marked uptick in the number of notes, it looks like they have a distinct target: Tories. Institutionalised bias, anyone?

The content of the notes themselves disproves any claim that the only answer is Tories talking more twaddle on Twitter. Editors “add context” by advertising Labour, defending Labour policies and clarifying Starmer’s comments when attacked by Tories. Labour attacks and vague policy promises go unchecked and uncontextualised. The only community note handed down to Labour’s account, meanwhile, explains that Sunak was instructed to use the side of the hammer in November…

Many of the notes attack Tory celebrations of Autumn Budget tax cuts by arguing threshold freezes are increasing overall tax – one goes so far as to say “It is misleading to suggest that “taxes are being cut“‘. Another says “tax has not been cut”. It’s fair to attack stealth tax rises and Guido does often, though it is factually incorrect to claim there has not been a tax cut. It also happens to be an explicit Labour attack line…

Noting power is given to a small number of Twitter users – Guido being one – and even fewer are proactive Community Note editors. While Elon Musk complains Wikipedia is “losing its objectivity” to the “biases of higher ranking editors” the same syndrome is affecting his platform. Twitter is not objective and shouldn’t pretend to be – it risks falling into the same trap…