How the Crabtree conspiracy played out on X’s Community Notes

A video of an unarmed man tackling one of the Bondi Beach terrorists went viral in the immediate aftermath of the attack in Sydney on December 14.

The man, Ahmed al-Ahmed, likely saved several lives by intervening. Yet his act quickly turned into a point of dispute on X as many challenged his identity as a Muslim immigrant.

Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, pollster Rasmussen Reports, and random Indian nationalist accounts were among the many who falsely claimed that al-Ahmed was Christian, native to Australia, or both. One of the dominant narratives was that he was actually an IT specialist by the name of Edward Crabtree. This false claim originated from thedailyaus[.]world, a barely populated and recently created domain meant to evoke the more established thedailyaus.com.au.

Even Grok confidently regurgitated the false claim about Crabtree. (The AI chatbot also called real footage of al-Ahmed disarming the gunman “an old viral video of a man climbing a palm tree.”)

The debate over the Bondi beach hero serves as a valuable case study of the strengths and weaknesses of Community Notes – X’s crowdsourced fact-checking feature that has been imitated by Meta and TikTok – for three different reasons.

First of all, there’s plenty to review. I found 358 notes on this topic written between December 14 and 16 by searching for the terms “crabtree,” “al ahmed,” or “dailyausworld” in the Community Notes database¹ and removing any irrelevant posts (Indicator members can see them here). Looking at the day of the attack alone, more than 11% of all Community Notes posted were about al-Ahmed.

This was a breaking news event that drew global attention, so X could also lean on many users with diverse opinions willing to rate the notes as “helpful” or “not helpful”. This part is essential given that the platform only attaches notes to tweets if they were upvoted by users who disagreed on other topics in the past.

Finally, the Crabtree conspiracy was swiftly debunked by reputable sources, which is an ideal scenario for a program that relies on volunteers who don’t necessarily have the time or expertise to fact-check something in great depth. It is estimated that al-Ahmed disarmed the terrorist around 6:45 p.m. local time, and footage of his actions was circulating on X about an hour later. By approximately 11 p.m., the TV network 7News had identified him and expert sources had called thedailyaus[.]world out as a fake news site. This should have given Community Notes contributors the necessary grounding to easily squelch the “Edward Crabtree” hoax. 

What happened next was a perfect representation of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Community Notes program.