From “Online Spat May Make Musk Rethink Crowdsourced Censorship”

by Catherine Salgado 

On Thursday, Musk posted, “Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media. Working to fix this.” Since the original tweet has been deleted, it is unclear exactly which Community Note Musk was referring to. But Gizmodo claimedthat Musk was frustrated by Community Notes using leftist sources to defend Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelensky, who has postponed elections in his country and refused to agree to the peace terms with Russia proposed by the Trump administration.

Also on [Feb. 20], Musk critiqued a since-removed Community Note on a video clip shared by the account Acyn. The  now removed Note apparently utilized leftist legacy media to assert that Musk dishonestly stated that his SpaceX intends to rescue astronauts who will have been stranded for nearly 300 days on the space station. “They were left up there for political reasons,” Musk told Fox News host Sean Hannity. Musk subsequently replied to the Note saying, “This Community Note is false. SpaceX could have brought the astronauts back last year, but Biden pushed the return past the inauguration date. Legacy media is NOT a reliable source.”

Community Notes fact checkers proceeded to retaliate by imposing a second Note, this time on Musk’s criticism of the previous censorship. “X is not supposed to be choosing what community notes show up, it is the community that decides what sources are reliable,” the note pontificated. “Additionally, ‘legacy media’ is included in good examples of community notes on the community notes guide.” The post included a link to the Community Notes Guide.