From Birdwatch to Community Notes, from Twitter to X: four years of community-based content moderation

Abstract

Community Notes (formerly known as Birdwatch) is the first large-scale crowdsourced content moderation initiative launched by X (formerly Twitter) in January 2021. As the Community Notes model gains momentum across other social media platforms, there is a growing need to assess its underlying dynamics and effectiveness. This paper provides a descriptive investigation of Community Notes during its first four years, examining its linguistic diversity, sourcing practices, Contributor activity, rating behaviour, and interaction networks. In addition, we release a curated dataset and accompanying source code to support future research, along with a review of prior research on Community Notes. We parsed Notes and ratings data from the first four years of the program and conducted language detection across all Notes. For English-language Notes, we extracted embedded URLs and identified discussion topics in each Note. Additionally, we constructed monthly interaction networks among the Contributors. Together, the descriptive analysis, dataset, code, and literature review provide a foundation for advancing research on Community Notes and community-based content moderation more broadly.