An inside look at X’s Community Notes | Keith Coleman (VP of Product) and Jay Baxter (ML Lead)
Keith Coleman (VP of product) and Jay Baxter (founding ML engineer), the minds behind Community Notes, reveal how a small, scrappy team inside Twitter/X built the most trusted crowdsourced information system on the internet—one that’s changing the way we understand truth online. What you’ll learn:
- How Community Notes actually works—a deep dive into the groundbreaking algorithm that rewards “bridging agreement” instead of majority rule
- The seemingly crazy yet brilliant way this idea survived multiple CEO changes—from Jack to Parag to Elon
- How this project started with a dumpster fire GIF (literally)—the untold backstory of its early launch
- The secret to running ultra-fast, high-impact product teams—no OKRs, no Jira; just one Google Doc
- What Meta’s adoption of Community Notes means for the future of online (mis)information—why this open source system is becoming the industry standard
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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-x-built-the-best-fact-checking-system-on-the-internet
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Where to find Keith Coleman:
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Where to find Jay Baxter:
- X: https://x.com/_jaybaxter_
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaybaxter/
- Website: http://jaybaxter.net/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Community Notes
(06:56) How the “bridging-based” algorithm works
(13:33) The impact and scale of Community Notes
(17:24) Understanding the note publishing threshold
(21:32) Challenges and philosophies
(26:26) The effect of notes on re-sharing content
(29:41) Origin story
(35:46) Embracing small teams for big impact
(40:23) The thermal project approach
(47:47) Algorithm development and internal competitions
(50:34) An inside look at how the team operates
(58:56) Working with Elon
(01:05:30) Launching Birdwatch
(01:10:48) The core principles behind Community Notes
(01:26:15) Anonymity and pseudonymity in contributions
(01:32:17) Sustaining the project through leadership changes
(01:37:57) Future directions for Community Notes
(01:42:12) Final thoughts and optimism for the future
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Referenced:
- Community Notes on X: https://x.com/CommunityNotes
- Sign up to be a Community Notes contributor: https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/contributing/signing-up
- The Making of Community Notes: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/the-making-of-community-notes
- “Readers added a Community Note to this Tweet”: https://x.com/HelpfulNotes/status/1718103364792205704
- Note-ranking algorithm: https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/under-the-hood/ranking-notes#matrix-factorization
- Study: Community Notes on X could be key to curbing misinformation: https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/news/2024/11/18/study--community-notes-on-x-could-be-key-to-curbing-misinformation
- Study Finds X’s (Formerly Twitter’s) Community Notes Provide Accurate, Credible Answers to Vaccine Misinformation: https://qi.ucsd.edu/study-finds-xs-formerly-twitters-community-notes-provide-accurate-credible-answers-to-vaccine-misinformation/
- Did the Roll-Out of Community Notes Reduce Engagement with Misinformation on X/Twitter?: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686967
- Kayvon Beykpour on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayvz/
- Jack Dorsey on X: https://x.com/jack
- “Birdwatch gives me the creeps” tweet: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589454464611540992
- Blake Scholl on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakescholl/
- Creating Truthtelling Incentives with the Bayesian Truth Serum: https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs286r/courses/fall12/papers/DW08.pdf
- Asana: https://asana.com/
- Spaces: https://blog.x.com/en_us/t
