How X Community Notes Get Written, Rated and Shown on Posts

The context boxes under some posts are X community notes: short notes that volunteer contributors write and rate, which X shows only after people who have disagreed in past ratings rate a note helpful. X describes the goal in its Community Notes guide: "Community Notes aims to create a better-informed world, by empowering people on X to collaboratively add helpful notes to posts that might be misleading." If you watch X for mentions of your product, check for a note before you reply to any post about it.

What are X community notes?

X community notes are crowd-written context attached to individual posts. Contributors propose a note, other contributors rate it, and the ratings alone decide whether the note appears under the post. X says it "doesn't rate or moderate notes (unless they break X's Rules), and never decides which notes show."

Three facts from the guide set the scope:

• Any post qualifies. The FAQ says: "Any post can receive a Community Note."
• Contributors are anonymous. Everyone who joins gets an auto-generated alias that is "not publicly associated with contributors' X accounts."
• Everything is public. X publishes all notes and ratings for download, and the ranking code is open source on GitHub.

The program launched in January 2021 under the name Birdwatch, and the sign-up link still points to join-birdwatch.

Community Notes is a different feature from X Communities. Communities are groups where members post about a topic, while notes are context on single posts.

How does a community note get written?

A community note starts as a proposal from a contributor who has unlocked the ability to write. New contributors can only rate at first. They unlock writing once they earn a Rating Impact of at least 5, and Rating Impact grows each time their ratings help a note reach Helpful or Not Helpful.

The writing flow on X has five steps:

1. Open the ••• menu on the post and pick Write a Community Note.
2. Answer the multiple-choice questions and write the context that explains why the post is or is not misleading.
3. Submit. The note goes to the Community Notes site with the status Needs More Ratings.
4. Other contributors answer "Is this note helpful?" with Yes, Somewhat or No.
5. If the note earns the status Helpful, X shows it on the post.

X limits how many notes each writer can propose. The daily cap is the lower of Writing Impact plus 5 and hit rate times 200, and a writer with negative Writing Impact gets 1 note per 24 hours. A writer starts with up to 3 notes a day on any single post author.

Writers with a Writing Impact of 2 or more can attach a note to an image or video instead of the post, and writers at 10 or more can attach one to a link. X then shows that note on every post its system matches to the same media or link. For a brand, that means a note about a product photo follows the photo onto every post that reuses it.

AI programs can also propose notes through X's AI Note Writer API, but the guide is clear that "AI Note Writers cannot rate notes." Humans still decide what shows.

How does the bridging algorithm decide which notes show?

The bridging algorithm shows a note only when contributors who have disagreed in their past ratings both rate it helpful. X's guide names it directly, saying Community Notes "uses a bridging algorithm," and adds that it "doesn't work by majority rules."

The mechanism is matrix factorization on the table of notes and raters. X maps each rating to a number (Yes is 1.0, Somewhat is 0.5, No is 0.0) and fits a model that explains each rating with two parts: a viewpoint factor shared by raters who tend to agree, and an intercept that captures helpfulness the viewpoint does not explain. The note's intercept is its helpfulness score. Because the model penalizes intercepts more heavily than factors, a note only scores high when raters on both sides of the factor rate it helpful.

X judges "different perspectives" from rating history alone. The guide says it does not use "demographics like location, gender, or political affiliation, or data from X such as follows or posts."

Status	How a note gets there	Shown on the post?
Needs More Ratings	Every note starts here and stays until it has at least 5 ratings and a decisive score	No, contributors see it to rate it
Helpful	Helpfulness score of 0.40 or higher and a factor between -0.50 and 0.50, on a note marking the post "potentially misleading"	Yes
Not Helpful	Score below -0.05 minus 0.8 times the factor's absolute value, with at least 3 ratings from each side of the factor	No

The model retrains every hour, so statuses change as ratings arrive. A note can show on a post and then disappear. X locks statuses after 2 weeks. Notes that say a post is "not misleading" do not show on the post, even when rated Helpful.

Who can become a Community Notes contributor?

Any X account that meets three criteria can sign up as a contributor. The account needs:

1. No recent notice of violations of X's Rules.
2. An X join date at least 6 months ago.
3. A verified phone number from a trusted carrier that no other Community Notes account uses.

X admits applicants on a periodic basis. When more people apply than there are slots, X admits accounts at random from country-specific waitlists, so applicants in large markets wait longer. X expands the contributor base country by country.

People who are not contributors can still ask for a note. Any account with a verified phone number can pick Request Community Note from the ••• menu, up to 5 requests a day at the start. Contributors with Top Writer status see the requests once a post collects enough of them.

What does a community note on a post mean when you reply?

A community note on a post means contributors from opposing rating patterns agreed the post needs context, and anyone who opens the post sees that context next to the claim. Read the note before you write a reply, because your reply sits under it.

Four rules from X's guide matter to someone replying by hand:

• Repliers get notified. X sends a notification to everyone who replied to, liked or reposted a post once a note has shown on it for 24 hours, is rated Helpful, and was written within the past week. A reply that repeats a noted claim brings that notification to you.
• Reach stays the same. The FAQ says that beyond the note itself, "notes do not affect display of posts or enforcement of X's Rules."
• Blocks and mutes do not hide notes. The FAQ says "blocking or muting does not impact the visibility of notes written by the account."
• Only the post author can ask for another look. Authors can request additional review of a Helpful note on their own post. Anyone can report a note that breaks X's Rules from the ••• menu on the note.

If a post about your product carries a wrong note, you cannot remove it. Reply with the facts and a link to a source, since contributors' ratings decide whether the note stays and only the post author can ask for another review. If the note is right, answer the person's real question without restating the claim the note corrects. Our guide to social media crisis management covers how to answer a public complaint that is already spreading.

Replying to a post that carries a note

The note is right

• Answer the person's real question
• Do not restate the claim the note corrects

The note is wrong

• You cannot remove it
• Reply with the facts and a link to a source
• Only the post author can ask for another review

How do you find community notes about your brand?

You find community notes about your brand on the Community Notes site and in X's public data. The site has three timelines: Needs your help (contributors only), New, and Rated Helpful. X publishes all notes and ratings as daily downloads, so a team can search the files for its brand name.

Finding the posts in the first place is a search job. X advanced search operators narrow a brand query to exact phrases, dates and accounts, and our guide to monitoring brand mentions covers how to keep that search running across networks. For the wider picture of what people say about a category on X, see Twitter social listening.

How does RedReplier fit next to X community notes?

RedReplier finds the X posts worth replying to, and you check them for notes before you answer. Twitter monitoring in RedReplier scans new X posts and replies for the keywords, phrases and competitor handles you add, and ranks each match by buyer intent. Matches land on your RedReplier dashboard within minutes of a post going live, and email alerts go out as digests on a cadence you set per keyword, from hourly to daily. RedReplier drafts a reply and never posts it for you, so you open the post on X, read any note on it, then edit and post the reply yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Who writes X community notes?

Volunteer contributors write them. Any account at least 6 months old, with a verified phone number and no recent rule violations, can sign up. New contributors rate notes first and unlock writing at a Rating Impact of 5.

Are Community Notes contributors anonymous?

Yes. Each contributor gets an auto-generated alias that X does not publicly link to their account. Their notes and ratings are public on the Community Notes site under that alias.

How many ratings does a community note need?

A note needs at least 5 ratings before it can leave Needs More Ratings. To show on the post, it also needs a helpfulness score of 0.40 or higher, a factor between -0.50 and 0.50, and a claim that the post is potentially misleading.

Does a community note reduce a post's reach on X?

No. X's FAQ says that beyond showing the note, notes "do not affect display of posts or enforcement of X's Rules." People who replied to, liked or reposted the post get a notification once the note has shown for 24 hours.

Can you remove a community note from a post?

The post author can request additional review, which puts the note in front of contributors on the Community Notes site. X gives no guarantee that more contributors rate it. If new ratings drop it below Helpful, it stops showing. X does not decide the outcome, and anyone can report a note that breaks X's Rules.

Can you block the writer of a community note?

No. Notes carry aliases, not usernames, and X's FAQ says blocking or muting does not affect the visibility of notes written by an account. The note shows to everyone who sees the post.

What is the difference between X Community Notes and X Communities?

Communities are groups where members post about a topic. Community Notes add context to single posts, written and rated by volunteer contributors. The two features are separate.

What is the bridging algorithm in Community Notes?

It is the ranking method X uses to decide which notes show. A note appears only when contributors who have disagreed in past ratings both rate it helpful, so it does not work by majority rules. X judges perspectives from rating history alone, not from demographics, follows or posts.

How do you request a community note on a post?

Open the ••• menu on the post and pick Request Community Note. You need a verified phone number, and you get up to 5 requests a day at the start. Contributors with Top Writer status see the requests once a post collects enough of them.

Can AI write community notes?

AI programs can propose notes through X's AI Note Writer API. They cannot rate notes, so human contributors still decide which notes show.