---
title: FAQs
description: Who is eligible to participate in Community Notes? · Are contributions anonymous?
navWeight: 30
---
# FAQs
## Contributing to Community Notes

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{% accordionItem title="Who is eligible to participate in Community Notes? Is there an approval process?" %}
Anyone can sign up to become contributors. Accounts must meet a few criteria to be eligible. [Learn more here](../contributing/signing-up.md).
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{% accordionItem title="Are contributions anonymous? Or will my name be attached to my notes?" %}
We want everyone to feel comfortable contributing to Community Notes. Because of that, all contributors get a new, auto-generated display name (or alias) when they join Community Notes. These aliases are not publicly associated with contributors’ X accounts, so everyone can write and rate notes privately.

You can learn more about aliases [here](../contributing/aliases.md).
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{% accordionItem title="Why does Community Notes allow anyone to write notes, rather than experts?"%}
We believe regular people can valuably contribute to identifying and adding helpful context to potentially misleading information. Many of the internet’s existing collaborative sites thrive with the help of non-expert contributions — Wikipedia, for example — and, while it’s not a cure-all, research has shown the potential of incorporating crowdsourced based approaches as part of a broader toolkit to address misleading information on the internet, for example:

- [Allen, Arechar, Pennycook, and Rand 2021](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf4393)
- [Resnick, Alfayez, Im, and Gilbert 2021](https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.07898)
- [Bhuiyan, Zhang, Sehat, and Mitra 2020](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.09533.pdf)
- [Kim and Walker 2020](https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/leveraging-volunteer-fact-checking-to-identify-misinformation-about-covid-19-in-social-media/)

In our pilot test of Community Notes, we evaluated notes that would be shown on posts, and have found:

- The majority of people surveyed on X found notes helpful
- People in surveys were 20-40% less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading post after reading the note about it, compared to those who saw a post without a note
- Most notes have been rated highly on accuracy by professional reviewers; it has been rare to find a note that reviewers agree is inaccurate

The people on X span a wide gamut of backgrounds and experiences, and we believe that, working together, they can help create a better-informed world.
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{% accordionItem title="What posts are eligible to be annotated in Community Notes?" %}
Any post can receive a Community Note.
{% /accordionItem %}

{% accordionItem title="Does blocking/muting impact the display of Community Notes?" %}
We want everyone to feel comfortable contributing to Community Notes, so contributors participate under [aliases](../contributing/aliases.md). This allows contributors to write and rate notes without sharing their X usernames. To keep aliases visibly independent of X usernames, blocking or muting does not impact the visibility of notes written by the account. In addition to enhancing privacy, this also allows post authors (and anyone on X) to be able to see the proposed notes on their posts.
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{% accordionItem title="There’s a Community Note on one of my posts. What does that mean?" %}
Post authors with Community Notes on their posts can request additional review or report notes. [Learn more](../contributing/additional-review.md).
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{% accordionItem title="How do I opt-out of the program?" %}
If you join the program but later want to leave, you can do so in your [Community Notes settings](https://x.com/i/communitynotes/notification_settings).

If you leave and then later want to re-join, you can do so on your [Community Notes alias profile](http://x.com/i/communitynotes/u/me).
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## Policies and rules

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{% accordionItem title="Will Community Notes contributions affect content on X? Will it be used to label or remove posts? " %}
Notes that have been rated helpful by enough contributors from [different points of view](../contributing/diversity-of-perspectives.md) will appear directly on posts. Beyond that, notes do not affect display of posts or enforcement of X's [Rules](https://help.x.com/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules). Our current focus is gaining confidence that Community Notes produces context people from [different points of view](../contributing/diversity-of-perspectives.md) find helpful and informative.
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{% accordionItem title="How does Community Notes relate to X's other policies?" %}
Community Notes is designed to add context that is informative and helpful to people from different points of view. It is intended to complement our other policies and rules.
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{% accordionItem title="Can people be removed from the Community Notes program? What if someone is writing harmful content in their notes?" %}
All contributors and all Community Notes contributions are subject to X's [Rules](https://help.x.com/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules). Failure to abide by the rules can result in removal from the Community Notes program, and/or other remediations.

If you believe a note may have violated X's [Rules](https://help.x.com/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules), you can report it by clicking or tapping the ••• menu on a note, and then selecting "Report”, or by using [this form](https://help.x.com/en/forms/community-note).

Contributors who consistently write unhelpful notes may also have their [ability to write new notes temporarily locked](../contributing/writing-ability.md).
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{% accordionItem title="How will attempts to abuse or manipulate Community Notes be prevented?" %}
Community Notes will only be successful if the context it produces is found to be helpful and appropriate by a wide range of people with diverse views. This won’t be true if it can be taken over by a single group or ideology, or used in an abusive manner. We believe this is possible, and will be experimenting with different mechanics and incentives to help make it happen. Learn more about how we are approaching these issues [here](./challenges.md).
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## Research

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{% accordionItem title="Will researchers and others outside X be able to download and analyze the data? " %}
All Community Notes' data are made publicly available on the [Download Data](https://x.com/i/communitynotes/download-data) page of the Community Notes site so that anyone has free access to analyze the data, identify problems, and spot opportunities to make Community Notes better. [You can learn more about our data here.](../under-the-hood/download-data.md)
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{% accordionItem title="Is X working with any outside organizations to build this product?" %}
A wealth of relevant knowledge exists beyond our virtual walls, so we are drawing on external research and collaborating with a variety of groups and organizations for their expertise and input. In building Community Notes, we’ve drawn on input from academic advisors whose expertise includes crowdsourcing, online juries, political science, polarization and more. Their input has helped us shape what Community Notes is today. We’re also [collaborating with professional reviewers](https://x.com/communitynotes/status/1422293696041603081) as part of our analysis of the helpfulness & quality of information elevated by Community Notes.
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Have more questions? Feel free to post or message our team [@CommunityNotes](https://x.com/communitynotes)