Prevent Incorporation of Elon's Political Bias into Community Notes Algorithm to Maintain Platform Neutrality

[xcsf6]

I'm filing this issue to highlight a concerning post from Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), which appears to undermine the credibility of the Community Notes feature. This tweet suggests that Community Notes is being "gamed" by external entities like governments and legacy media, specifically in the context of a poll related to Ukrainian President Zelensky. Such public statements from the owner could pressure engineering teams to alter the Community Notes algorithm in ways that introduce political bias, potentially violating the platform's commitment to transparency and neutrality.Relevant Tweet from Elon MuskHere's the full text of the tweet in question (posted on X, with the provided ID or link if available; based on the query, this matches the content dated around August 2025):

This post not only questions the integrity of Community Notes but also promotes a politically charged narrative against Zelensky, aligning with far-right viewpoints on the Ukraine conflict. Elon Musk has a history of amplifying such perspectives, and his influence as osnwer raises risks of biased modifications to the feature.Evidence of Elon Musk's Alignment with Far-Right Political SupportersElon Musk's political leanings have increasingly aligned with far-right groups and figures, which could influence decisions on features like Community Notes.

For instance:

• In Germany: Musk has publicly supported the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right political party known for its nationalist, anti-immigration, and Euroskeptic stances. He has retweeted and praised AfD leaders, stating in interviews and posts that the party represents "the future of Europe." This endorsement came amid AfD's rise in polls, particularly during the 2025 German federal elections, where Musk urged Germans to vote for AfD to counter what he called "woke" policies.

• In the UK: Musk has backed Reform UK (often referred to as "Advance UK" in shorthand or misnomer contexts, but formally Reform UK), a far-right populist party led by Nigel Farage. He has donated to the party, hosted Farage on X Spaces, and tweeted support for their anti-immigration and Brexit-hardline positions. In 2024-2025, Musk explicitly called for Reform UK to form the next government, criticizing mainstream parties as "establishment puppets."

These affiliations demonstrate a pattern of Musk promoting far-right ideologies, which could lead to criteria in Community Notes that favor such narratives (e.g., downranking notes critical of Trump or Zelensky while elevating pro-AfD/Reform UK content). This is especially problematic given Musk's control over X's direction.Request to X Engineering TeamI urge the X engineering team not to incorporate the owner's political biased criteria into the Community Notes system or any related algorithms. Community Notes was designed as a crowd-sourced, transparent fact-checking mechanism to combat misinformation without centralized bias. Any changes influenced by Musk's personal views—such as prioritizing "anti-establishment" or far-right-leaning notes—would erode user trust, invite regulatory scrutiny (e.g., under EU DSA rules), and contradict engineering best practices for impartial AI moderation.

Specific Recommendations:

Maintain Algorithmic Neutrality: Ensure all updates to Community Notes are based on data-driven metrics (e.g., consensus from diverse contributors) rather than executive directives. Conduct blind audits to detect bias.

Transparency Logs: Publicly log all proposed changes to the feature, including rationale, and allow community review before implementation.

Diverse Contributor Incentives: Bolster recruitment from non-partisan or wide ranges of political stances from left to right parties to balance owner's potential far-right dominance in the notes ecosystem.

Independent Review Board: Establish an external, non-Musk-influenced board to oversee modifications, similar to other platforms' trust and safety councils.

Rollback Safeguards: If any "fixes" are already in progress (as hinted in the tweet), implement version control to revert biased updates.

This issue is critical for preserving X as a neutral public square. If unaddressed, it could lead to widespread manipulation of information flow, disproportionately benefiting far-right supporters like AfD and Reform UK. I'd be happy to discuss technical implementations or contribute code for bias-detection tools.

[Jacobsonradical]

Here is my opinion, as a non-developer of CN.

I think CN has been

1. maintaining algorithmic neutrality (there is no executive directives that affect how the algorithm has been developed and operated)
2. providing transparent log (see the website and Github)
3. keeping diversity of contributor (it does not really matter whether the contributor is non-partisan, the algorithm aims to bridge consensus of raters from both sides, and you do have raters with close-to-zero rater factor, implying neutrality)

For independent review board, I think the goal of CN is use the wisdom of crowd. If you want to apply professional fact checking or anything like that, it is outside the scope of CN.

For rollback safeguard, the algorithm is ran every day and updated the status of each note. Although there is a note stabilization, I don't see "status flipping" happens to majority of the note after algorithm update or over time.

Overall I don't think Elon Musk can single-handedly change how a machine learning algorithm learns.