X To Speed Up Community Notes with ‘Lightning Notes’, Raises API Prices

Highlights

• X is speeding up its Community Notes fact-checking system with Lightning Notes.
• This will reduce the time for user-submitted notes to appear.
• X announced higher prices for its API service.
• Introduced discounted annual subscription options for developers.

Fact-checking is now an essential part of social media and X (earlier Twitter) community notes are one of the best examples of how platforms can effectively execute it.

While anyone who uses X will vouch for the fact that community notes are saving the platform in many ways, X too seems to understand the importance of this feature.

The platform is going to speed up community notes.

X is working to make its Community Notes fact-checking system faster with a new feature called Lightning Notes.

Introducing Lightning Notes ⚡ People want fast notes. So we re-architected the system to score notes faster. Since rolling this out, we’ve seen notes go live in as little as 14m33s after being written, and 18m20s after the post itself was written. Ludicrously fast? Now reality!… pic.twitter.com/CuNsGEIKJY

— Community Notes (@CommunityNotes) October 29, 2024

The platform announced it has redesigned the scoring system that drives Community Notes, so now user-submitted notes can appear less than 20 minutes after a post goes live.

Community Notes, which launched in 2022, lets users fact-check or add important context to posts. Contributors must provide sources, and others rate the “helpfulness” of these notes.

To discourage misinformation, creators are penalised if their posts receive Community Notes. Now, this entire process is designed to be much faster.

Lightning notes can go live in as little as 14 minutes and 33 seconds after they are written or just 18 minutes and 20 seconds after the original post.

This will take care of the common issue when fact-checks appear too late to counter viral misinformation.

A Bloomberg report earlier revealed that fact-checks on popular posts sometimes took hours to appear, reaching only a fraction of the original post’s viewers.

It remains unclear how frequently Lightning Notes will speed up the fact-checking process. X now has more than 800,000 fact-checking contributors worldwide, some posts may still take longer to go through Community Notes.

X Raises API Prices and Launches Annual Subscriptions

Meanwhile, in a separate move, X announced that it is increasing prices for its API service and introducing discounted annual subscription options.

We are changing our Self Serve X API with new pricing options and limits. Below are the highlights. 🎉

~ Launching Annual Subscriptions: available at discounted rates!

~ Basic: will increase from $100 to $200 monthly with higher limits and new endpoints

~ Free: Introducing…

— Developers (@XDevelopers) October 30, 2024

The cost of the basic API tier has doubled from $100 to $200 and the Elon Musk app also plans to raise limits and add new endpoints for this tier, including reposts_of_me and communities search.

X shared the update on its developer community page, stating that the basic tier’s read limit will increase from 10,000 to 15,000.

However, the API comparison page still shows the old limits, which could be an error.

X Developer’s account also mentioned an experimental read API for the free tier but didn’t highlight that free tier limits for posts have dropped from 1,500 to 500.

X has also introduced cheaper yearly plans for both the Basic and Pro tiers for developers interested in annual subscriptions.

The Basic annual plan now costs $2,100, while the Pro annual plan is priced at $54,000.

Earlier this year, X allowed developers to buy top-ups to increase their API read and post limits capped at 10 for the Basic tier and 5 for the Pro.

FAQs

Q1. What is the new feature X is introducing to speed up Community Notes?

Answer. X is working to make its Community Notes fact-checking system faster with a new feature called Lightning Notes.

Q2. How do Community Notes work on X?

Answer. Community Notes lets users fact-check or add important context to posts. Contributors must provide sources, and others rate the “helpfulness” of these notes. To discourage misinformation, creators are penalized if their posts receive Community Notes.

Q3. What changes are being made to X’s API service?

Answer. X announced that it is increasing prices for its API service and introducing discounted annual subscription options. The cost of the basic API tier has doubled from $100 to $200, and X plans to raise limits and add new endpoints for this tier.

Also Read : Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) Faces Security Breach Exposing Private Likes

Also Read : Indian Twitter Rival Koo Has Shut Down: What Led to Its Demise?

Also Read : X App Privacy Update: Public Likes Removed