X (formerly Twitter) has started an interesting experiment with Community Notes, aiming to do more than just flag misinformation. Now, they're testing whether this tool can highlight posts that people from all sorts of backgrounds genuinely like.
Since July 24, a group of Community Notes contributors are being asked a different kind of question: not just whether a post is accurate, but also why it’s valuable, and whether folks holding different opinions would feel the same. All this uses what X calls its “bridging algorithm,” which looks for agreement across divides. If people who usually see things differently both rate a post highly, that post could get special attention.
This marks a pretty big shift for Community Notes. Instead of just fact-checking, the goal is to find and lift up those posts that seem to bring people together—a rare thing on social media these days. When much of what trends online feels divisive, it's refreshing to see an effort to point out the content that unites rather than splits.
It’s also timely. Over 200,000 people are already helping out with Community Notes, and similar experiments are popping up over at Meta on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Even AI is getting involved, drafting notes that contributors later review. But for now, the final word still rests with actual people, not bots.
Of course, the system isn’t flawless; sometimes fact-checks come too late and misinformation spreads before notes can catch up. But using crowdsourced consensus not just to correct, but to spotlight the good stuff, could be a step toward a less combative, more connected feed.
So, X is giving its Community Notes program a new role: helping surface the posts people genuinely appreciate, based on input from lots of voices and a bit of clever algorithmic thinking. Maybe it’ll help nudge social media toward a little more common ground.