We were a team of ~8-18 people at different points, mostly fully dedicated to this project. Most folks were super senior & top in their area, recruited directly to work on this project.
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Oh! A key piece of context I forgot here- of ~18 team members at the end, we had 3 full time PhD social scientists. This ratio is absolutely unheard of (usually 1 is split over multiple projects), and speaks to the unique dedication to grappling with the social nature of misinfo & UX on the project.
We also had leeway to take time & resources to get it right (though of course it was never perfect). We spent 2 years carefully testing, identifying risks & mitigations, setting up monitoring and guardrails*, and slowly expanding as we gained confidence.
*aside - I have no idea if any of the guardrails still exist. Seems unlikely that the expert ratings evals continue in current context or that survey measures continue without researchers, but I have no info on this.
2 years may seem short to academic folks, but realize for contrast MANY products are launched based on interviews of 6-10 people (*often ignored/discounted), and maybe an A/B test or two.
After Musk took over, over half of the team quit or were laid off. I’ve not heard of any substantial subsequent expansion. It’s possible, but given Musk’s attitude towards research, I don’t imagine that’s a part of it.
This to say, CN is not getting any sort of “acceleration”. Instead, it is PROPPED UP BY years of careful and diligent work by a team that’s mostly no longer there, without which it would have fallen apart long ago.
(3) Meta is fundamentally incapable of making a program like this work. Way back in the day (~2018), my first project there was “Community Review” - a program intended to supplement 3PFC misinformation ratings with lay person ratings. https://about.fb.com/news/2019/12/helping-fact-checkers/amp/
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https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/under-the-hood/guardrails
https://about.fb.com/news/2019/12/helping-fact-checkers/amp/