• Users in South Africa are now signing up to receive access to Community Notes on X.
• Africans on the social media platform have long complained that while the feature helps with misinformation, it is rarely seen tackling fake news in a local context.
• Hopefully, as more African nations can sign up for Community Notes, this will change.

As 2023 comes to a close we reflect on the unhinged tenure of Elon Musk as the boss of popular social media platform X, formerly Twitter. For all the seemingly nonsensical new features that have alienated users, the back-and-forth decision-making and the malice of potential site-wide subscriptions for general usage, one shining feature that has become popular during 2023 on X, is Community Notes.

While not perfect, the feature allows X users to police themselves, and shut down any misinformation receiving any form of notable attention on the platform. One drawback of the feature for a significant portion of the year was a lack of African representation.

According to X itself, the platform has been rolling out access to Community Notes for users in a phased approach in order to make considerations on different “nuances” found in unique markets around the globe. As of the latest update users in 44 countries are allowed to sign up to use Community Notes to police other users.

This includes the US, the UK, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, the whole of the European Union and others. The full list has not yet been published by X. Users in African countries, however, have long maligned a lack of attention from Community Notes towards African topics or other African users spreading misinformation.

Meanwhile, X has been quiet even after receiving complaints and comments from African users about the lack of access. We were first alerted that South African users could possibly sign up for Community Notes by X user Tauriq Moosa (h/t).

We succeeded in signing up, which will only require you to input and then validate your cellphone number. If you are an X user for longer than six months, you should be able to gain access, that is if X believes your mobile carrier is trustworthy. Vodacom seems to be “trustworthy”, while MTN seems to have an issue with the signup.

The signup process is quick, but it doesn’t mean you will receive full access and be able to write up a Community Note.

Indeed, as X says “We will admit all contributors who meet the required criteria, but if we have more applicants than slots, we will randomly admit accounts, prioritizing those more likely to participate due to having been recently active on X, and those that tend to follow and engage with different posts than existing contributors do — so as to reduce the likelihood that contributors would be predominantly from one ideology, background, or interest space.”

That means if you are a South African hoping to be able to use the feature, you should use the platform more and engage with debates, dissenting opinions and a wide variety of users from different backgrounds. According to the platform, this will increase your chances of gaining access to Notes.

Otherwise, you will have to wait to gain full access, with X telling recent signees “You signed up for Community Notes. We’ll reach out when you’re ready to go.” There are no promises when exactly this will be.

But allowing South African users, and hopefully, users in other African nations is a step in the right direction. Like the rest of the world, misinformation on social media is a problem for users in the African continent, with infamous examples of accounts on X being spun up for the sole purpose of misleading individuals and farming hate towards certain social groups – the uLerato Pillay situation springs to mind.

The potential is there for Community Notes to make some changes for African users on X, at long last. Until then we wait and see if we will ever really get full access.