# Request a Note: How the Request Function Shapes X's Community Notes System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09956 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09956/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Sep 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Towards Multi-Agent-Simulation-Based Community Note Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18268/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

X's Community Notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking system. To improve its scalability, X introduced ``Request Community Note'' feature, enabling users to solicit fact-checks from contributors on specific posts. Yet, its implications for the system -- what gets checked, by whom, and with what quality -- remain unclear. Using 98,685 requested posts and their associated notes, we evaluate how requests shape the Community Notes system. We find that requested posts with higher GPT-estimated misleadingness and from authors with greater misinformation exposure are more likely to receive notes. Conversely, requested political posts (vs. non-political) are less likely to receive notes. We also observe partisan asymmetries: posts from Republicans are more likely to receive notes than those from Democrats. Although only 12% of requested posts receive request-fostered notes from top contributors, these notes are rated as more helpful and less polarized than others, partly reflecting top contributors' selective fact-checking of misleading posts. Our findings highlight both the limitations and promise of requests for scaling high-quality community-based fact-checking.