X’s crowdsourced fact-checking program Community Notes has been shrinking.
Despite the recent addition of AI bots, the number of notes was down 26% in the first 10 months of this year compared to the same period in 2024. The number of monthly active authors – defined as contributors who wrote at least one note in a given month – is also down 8.4%.
The overall figures conceal interesting subplots, however. One of them is the relative success of the program in Japan. (I’m defining Japanese contributors based on their choice of language, which is an imperfect but passable proxy.)
While the global Community Notes community contracted in 2025, the average number of contributors writing notes in Japanese grew by 8% (see chart below; watch the axes).
Japanese contributors are also over-represented among super contributors and far more likely to get their notes rated helpful than the global average.
What is going on?
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