Twitter has rolled out another update for Community Notes, with community-contributed contextual pointers now also being shown on quote tweets in the app. This new update now allows every quoted retweet to display the community note, ensuring more users get the additional context added by users.

In addition to that, Twitter's owner, Elon Musk has said that users will soon also be notified whenever anything that they’ve replied to, liked, or retweeted gets a Community Note added. That’ll help to expand awareness, and keep people more informed in the app, which could go some way towards reducing the spread of misinformation in tweets.

While it’s been in development for two years, Community Notes (formerly ‘Birdwatch’) has emerged as a key element in Elon Musk’s push to make Twitter a more trustworthy source of information, with the tool, in Elon Musk’s view at least, enabling a form of crowd-sourced fact-checking that will then reduce Twitter’s own obligations in regards to moderation and, in some views, censorship.

Elon Musk firmly believes that the users themselves should be the arbiters of truth, not platform management, and Community Notes provides a means for Twitter users to add their say, as well as additional reference notes, in order to fact-check any claims that may be untrue or unclear in tweets.

Which has some merit – and definitely, any level of friction in the sharing process, particularly when it comes to retweets, can help to reduce the spread of untrue information in the app.

Retweeting has been identified as a key amplifier of misinformation, because the process makes it incredibly easy to re-distribute content quickly, which many users then do without any level of fact-checking or consideration on their own part.

This is particularly true when matched with confirmation bias, which makes people far more likely to re-share information that supports their established views, even if it seems questionable or potentially incorrect. The presence of Community Notes slows this, with even the on-screen display of the note likely causing users to re-think their sharing behavior, and stunting rapid re-distribution of claims across the app.