X Speeds Up Community Notes with "Lightning Notes"

X is enhancing its Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking system, by revamping its scoring process. This update allows user-generated notes to appear in under 20 minutes after a post is published, speeding up the response to misinformation.

Introduced in 2022, Community Notes relies on users to fact-check posts and provide additional context, requiring contributors to cite sources. Other users then rate the notes' “helpfulness,” and creators face penalties for flagged posts to discourage monetizing false information. The new “lightning notes” feature promises corrections to go live in as little as 14 minutes and 33 seconds.

While this improvement aims to address criticisms about slow responses to viral misinformation, it's uncertain how often this quick process will occur. With over 800,000 contributors, some posts may still take longer to process through Community Notes.