How Community Notes reduce viral misinformation

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Jay Baxter, Keith Coleman |

TED2026

• April 2026

Community Notes on X started with a wild idea: Instead of tech companies deciding what's true, what if you let people fact-check each other? Keith Coleman and Jay Baxter, who helped build the crowdsourced system adding context to misleading posts, discuss how the program reduces viral misinformation — and why people across the political spectrum trust it. In conversation with TED guest curator Audrey Tang, they discuss how their "surprising agreement" algorithm could reveal the common ground that quietly exists across a polarized internet. (Followed by a note from TED guest curators Divya Siddarth and Audrey Tang)