EXPLAINER: How to add Community Notes on X posts

Instead of X (formerly Twitter) deciding what is true or false on user timelines, we can collectively provide context that others find useful. Community Notes on X is a crowd-based fact-checking system designed to add helpful context to posts that may be misleading, incomplete, or require clarification.

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X stated on its feature’s website that, “Community Notes is a collaborative way to keep people better informed. Contributors are people like you.”

What Community Notes actually does

Community Notes is not driven by majority opinion or platform moderation. Instead, it highlights notes that are considered helpful by people with different viewpoints.

As X explains, “Community Notes identifies notes that are found helpful by and for people with different points of view.”

This means visibility depends on whether users across perspectives agree a note is useful. Sign up: https://x.com/i/flow/join-birdwatch

Step 1: Check if you are eligible

Before you can join, X may prompt you with a message like:

To qualify as a Community Notes contributor, your account must be updated and meet the following conditions:

•  No recent violations of X Rules
• At least 6 months old
• A verified phone number linked to your account
• X also requires that the phone number must: 1. Be from a trusted phone carrier 2. Not be connected to other Community Notes accounts 3. These rules are in place to reduce spam and ensure contributors are real users. 4. As X notes, this helps ensure “real people instead of bots or adversarial actors.”

Step 2: Sign up as a contributor

Once eligible, users can sign up freely. X explains,”Sign ups are open to everyone. We want anyone to be able to participate and know that having contributors with different points of view is essential.”

After joining, all new contributors start by rating notes, over time, users who consistently contribute helpful ratings may gain the ability to write notes.

This gradual system ensures quality control before users can publish their own context.

Requesting a Community Note on a post

Even if you are not a contributor, you can still request a note. To do this, tap the three-dot menu (•••) on a post, and “Request Community Note”

To request a note, your account must also have a verified phone number, and users can make up to 5 requests per day initially, although this limit may change based on how useful the requests are.

X explains that request limits help prevent spam and encourage meaningful submissions.

When requests become visible to contributors

• Community Notes contributors see requests when certain conditions are met, including:
• A minimum number of requests on a post
• Requests from users with strong “helpfulness” scores
• Recent posts (usually within 24 hours)
• These signals help ensure contributors focus on posts that actually need clarification.

Transparency and participation
All Community Notes contributions are public and visible on the platform. X states,” To promote transparency, all contributions to Community Notes are anonymised and publicly visible on the Community Notes site.”

Users can also report notes they believe are misleading or inappropriate.

The system is built on the idea of collective judgment rather than platform control. Instead of X deciding what is true, users collectively determine what context is useful.

In simple terms, Community Notes works because different users review the same post, Notes are only shown if people across viewpoints find them helpful, and the system prioritises usefulness over popularity