Elon Musk Says Twitter Is The 'Least Wrong Source Of Truth' — And Divides Internet

Twitter CEO Elon Musk gave a statement that has the internet divided — and it’s about the prominence of the social media platform as a reliable “source of truth.”

What Happened: Musk took to Twitter to share an update about Community Notes, but before that, he said that the microblogging site is “arguably already the least wrong source of truth on the internet.” 

See Also: Elon Musk May Be Courting One Controversy After Another But Twitter Has Anyway Climbed To Top Of iPhone US News Charts

Musk’s statement didn’t go well with many Twitter users, while others like Dogecoin DOGE/USD co-creator Billy Markus, also known by his Twitter handle, Shibetoshi Nakamoto, said that “crowdsourcing is much better than a ministry of truth.”

community notes adding nuance and fact checking is a good thing – there's no 100% solution to misinformation but imo crowdsourcing is much better than a ministry of truth ~

— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) January 19, 2023

Here are a few more reactions to Musk’s tweet: 

Would it be possible to let some Citizen Journalists work with the Twitter Files? If so, I would love to take a peek at the data and contribute there.

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) January 19, 2023

"The least wrong source of truth on the internet"
That's quite the stretch, especially when people even post about the earth being flat on this platform…

— Dan Whitfield (@DanWhitCongress) January 19, 2023

Community Notes don't work for anything controversial because they require agreement from left and right on the facts, which cannot apparently happen even if the facts are absolutely clearly known. They are a disastrous way to fact-check anything beyond trivia.

— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) January 19, 2023

Wikipedia 2.0 – bigger, better, more transparent.

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) January 19, 2023

i think community notes is great. i was apart of the testing when it was birdwatch. highly suggest keeping it.

— nicholas liddle (@NLiddle16) January 19, 2023

Why It’s Important: Before Musk’s tweet, Community Notes’ official Twitter handle announced that the notes would also be shown on Quote Tweets. The feature is already live on the web app and will soon launch in iOS and Android versions. 

Besides the Community Notes update, Twitter has been working on other features. Developer Alessandro Paluzzi shared a series of posts saying that the platform has discarded the downvotes features in the latest Android alpha release and is working on the long-format tweets. 

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