Do Community Notes have a party preference?

Community notes are supposed to curb disinformation on X - but they themselves follow political patterns. A new data analysis shows that Green Party posts are particularly criticised, but their notes are hardly considered helpful. At the same time, there is no clear political trend in the notes that are actually published. Why is this the case? The article analyses patterns in the distribution and rating of the notes and sheds light on the dynamics that can be derived from the data.

Note: This work has not yet been peer reviewed.

Community Notes instead of Fact-checks?

At the beginning of the year, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was ending its collaboration with independent fact-checkers replacing them with X-style Community Notes (Notes for short). Zuckerberg claimed that fact-checking limited free speech. However, it seems more likely that this is a concession to Trump and the Republican Party, who accuse fact-checkers of being politically motivated.

The accusation that fact-checking is biased in favour of the left or liberal camp is not new and is also made in German-speaking countries. Of course, fact-checking, like any other journalistic genre, is not free of errors and distortions. However, it is often overlooked that disinformation is frequently associated with right-wing and populist attitudes (Lasser et al. 2022, Törnberg and Chueri 2025). If fact-checks tend to scrutinise right-wing actors, this does not necessarily reveal a bias, but could also reflect an actual asymmetry (Mosleh et al. 2024). For example, a recent study shows that helpful Notes are also more likely to be found in posts from the Republicans (Renault et al. 2025).

This blog post presents the results of a data analysis of German-language Notes that were rated as helpful or unhelpful at least 20 times and published between January 2024 and January 2025 inclusive. As Notes will also be launched on Facebook and Instagram in the future (initially only in the US), it is worth asking whether there is a focus on parties from a particular ideological spectrum.

How do Community Notes work on X?

Notes are found as comments on posts and are intended to point out their shortcomings. The Notes for this data analysis show posts as incorrect or unverified (Fig. 1). Notes are written by previously registered users. To register, the account must be older than six months and a verified phone number is required. Because anyone can participate, Notes are often described as the wisdom of the crowd and contrasted with fact-checks as an unbiased alternative. However, this interpretation overlooks the fact that the users who write Notes are not free of political views. Their assessments and comments may therefore be influenced by their own interests or ideological biases (Allen et al. 2022).

Figure 1 Post with a community note that was rated as helpful and therefore published.

Precisely because a single registration is enough to write Notes for all posts on X, this is not yet a sign of quality for their correctness. For this reason, registered users can not only write their own Notes, but also rate the Notes of others as helpful or not. To arrive at a final rating, X uses a so-called bridging algorithm. This algorithm takes into account the position of registered users on the political spectrum and requires contributors with different viewpoints to rate the note as helpful (Wojcik et al. 2022). This process is often successful in reflecting the political spectrum, but it also ensures that significantly fewer Notes are published than are actually written.

Which accounts of German parties and politicians receive Community Notes?

Figure 2 Number of posts with Community Notes.

In the following, I present the results of the data analysis. In total, I analysed almost 9000 Notes, of which almost 1700 were considered helpful and therefore published. Figure 2a shows the accounts with the most Notes. Of all accounts on X, Markus Söder, the leader of the CSU and Chief Minister of Bavaria, received the most Notes. However, this changes when it comes to helpful Notes (Fig. 2b). Here, with the exception of Julian Reichelt, former editor-in-chief of Bild and founder of Nius, rather unknown accounts are among the top-ranked accounts. Political accounts, namely those of the CSU and Markus Söder, are only found from 8th place onwards. With this in mind, and also looking at Fig. 2c and Fig. 2d, we can see that the accounts with the most Notes and those with the most helpful Notes are in some cases very different.

Which parties receive the most Community Notes?

Figure 3 Number of posts with Community Notes.

Figure 3 shows the Notes of German politicians by party. Party scores are often strongly influenced by individual politicians. As shown in Figure 2, for the CSU it is mainly the official party account and that of Markus Söder. For the SPD it is mainly Ralf Stegner, member of the Bundestag, and Arno Gottschalk, financial policy spokesman for the Bremen parliamentary group. A rough analysis of the content shows that Stegner’s posts mainly relate to the Russian war in Ukraine.

As before, the ranking of most Notes differs if you only look at the helpful ones. The Greens lead the ranking of Notes, closely followe