A new report claims that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has attempted to manipulate the “Community Notes” fact-checking feature on X, formerly Twitter, by suppressing negative content about Harris and amplifying negative content about former President Donald Trump.
According to The Federalist, the Harris campaign has directed political volunteers to block Community Notes on X that they “don’t like” and manipulate the social media platform’s fact-checking program. The Federalist claimed that one individual on a Harris campaign Discord server admitted that one of the campaign’s goals is to have political volunteers work to “block [Community Notes] we don’t like.”
The Federalist noted that before Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased X, the social media platform engaged in censorship practices regarding certain content. Following Musk’s purchase of X, the social media platform launched Community Notes as a crowdsourced version of fact-checking.
According to The Federalist, an X user can become a Community Notes contributor by signing up and reaching a certain rating threshold. When a Community Note contributor shares a note, it can become publicly visible if it receives enough ratings from other contributors.
The Federalist said the Harris campaign’s X account frequently shares posts of Trump taken out of context, leading to multiple proposed Community Notes. The outlet gave an example of one situation where the KamalaHQ X account shared a clip of Trump taken way out of context, alongside the caption, “Trump on Americans who don’t support him: ‘We can’t play games with these people. These are people that are dangerous people … I’ve never seen anything like it.”
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In the video clip, Trump specifically referenced President Joe Biden, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and an American who leaked Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran, not the American people.
The Federalist reported that an alleged Democrat staff member asked volunteers on a Discord channel, “Can folks rate notes as this as ‘not helpful’?” The outlet noted that the proposed Community Note on the Harris campaign’s post was not published despite Trump’s quote being taken out of context.
The Federalist also reported that there is a “twitter-community-notes” channel on Discord where “paid Democrat staffers are … writing dubious Community Notes on X to undermine GOP and Trump messaging. They then encourage volunteers to rate them positively.”
Additionally, The Federalist said that Harris campaign volunteers can complete a “Twitter (X) Community Notes Training” module that helps volunteers learn how to rate Community Notes and begin writing their own Community Notes.
