thearchivist.funMeta announces a US test of Community Notes
On 13 March 2025, Meta announced that a United States test of Community Notes would begin on 18 March across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. The initial phase allowed selected contributors to write and rate notes while the company tested the system before displaying notes broadly. The announcement followed Meta's earlier decision to change its approach to third-party fact-checking in the United States. The proposed mechanism depended on contributors reaching agreement across differing perspectives rather than simply accumulating the largest number of favorable ratings. Meta said it would initially build on the open-source approach used by X's Community Notes and adapt it through testing. A note needed to add context to a post; the existence of a drafting and rating system did not guarantee that every disputed claim would receive a visible note. This event is important as a governance change, but the company's description should not be treated as independent proof of effectiveness. Questions about coverage, response time, contributor participation and the treatment of difficult cases require evidence beyond the launch announcement. A system can have a thoughtful selection rule and still leave important material unannotated. For researchers, Community Notes also complicates the idea of a post as one stable object. The post may remain the same while contextual notes are proposed, rated, shown or later changed. A screenshot taken before a note appears can differ materially from a later capture. Preserve the post URL, note text, visible status and observation time separately. This record uses the announcement date because that is the documented event; the announced testing date is retained in the narrative so a future timeline does not confuse a plan, a test and a public rollout.
Context and provenance
The sources are primary accounts of Meta's announced design and rationale. Their evaluative claims should remain attributed, and the archive does not infer that a community system is automatically better or worse than professional fact-checking. The useful comparison asks what work each model performs, who can challenge a decision and what evidence becomes publicly inspectable. For a small research service, the analogous lesson is to make corrections visible. A note can improve a record without erasing the earlier version or hiding why a revision occurred. Transparent revision history gives readers a way to assess how knowledge changed.
Why it matters
The announcement made crowd-written contextual notes a central part of a major platform family's changing US moderation approach.
Sources and evidence
Editorial review: 2026-09-23. New evidence may change this account.