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…

According to research by Westminster lobbyists Headland, one in four MPs (26%) have set up a profile on Threads, while 90% of UK MPs have their own Twitter/X handle. Despite the hype Meta’s Instagram linked Threads has gained 169 MPs.

Headland crunched the numbers and found that while there is only a marginal difference between which party had the most MPs on the new channel – with 39% (67) of the early adopters on the Conservative benches and 44% (77) Labour – Labour MPs have been the busiest. Only 12 Conservative MPs have been “active” (i.e., posted content more than once in the past week), versus 29 Labour MPs.

Headland’s Gregor Poynton tells Guido:

“It’s difficult to imagine how Westminster worked before tweeting, and while it seems as though X’s influence over the political news cycle is unlikely to change anytime soon, it is waning. The question for MPs will be whether it’s worth the time and energy to engage with both Threads and X.”

Despite Elon Musk’s exasperating at times tinkering with Twitter / X it will be hard for a rival social media platform to beat it because of the strong network effect – with 90% of politicians and 100% of political media on Twitter a rival will have to have a compelling advantage to cause a mass migration. Threads so far looks bare.