Regular readers are probably familiar with the joke account Three Year Letterman. The key thing to get is that you just shouldn’t take most of the things he says seriously, but as different kinds of jokes. We're honestly not sure he is ever serious. One of those jokes came in response to the sad news that Joe Leiberman died:
BREAKING 🚨 🚨: Former Vice President and sitting Connecticut Senator Joel Lieberman has passed away at age 100. He was the longest serving senator in American history and enjoyed the highest approval rating of any elected Democratic official ever
— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) March 27, 2024
RIP Joel pic.twitter.com/pOFHKvueDr
Of course that is not his picture, that is not his name, he wasn’t vice president and so on. Basically …
… and the fact that almost everything in that post is wrong is kind of the joke. We don’t know whether he just thinks it's funny to intentionally get the story wrong, or he likes to laugh as people correct him, but this is the kind of thing that @gaypatriot (who is still unjustly suspended) did all the time. So, you’re just supposed to take it as a joke. But apparently Brigitte Gabriel of ACT For America didn’t realize it was a joke and decided to fact check it.
He was never Vice President. His name is Joe. He has not been in the Senate for over a decade.
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) March 27, 2024
This needs a community notes.
And that is pretty funny, in and of itself. But then what made it funnier is that her fact check received a Community Note. The Note has disappeared since then, but when we started this piece, there was a Community Note on it that said ‘Brigitte Gabriel never lettered in s—t,’ only with the curse word spelled out. It also contained a link to a Google search for ‘brigitte gabriel lettered in’—the entire phrase in quotes in the search.
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Here’s a screenshot:
On one hand, that Community Note is pretty funny.
But, let’s get serious for a moment, here. It also shows you that Community Notes absolutely can be abused. We admit that sometimes they are fun and funny, sometimes even as we know they are being abuse. But this author has also said for a while that Community Notes was much better back when money wasn’t involved. But once Twitter/X changed its policies so that a post that was Community Noted was ineligible for monetization …
Worth “noting” that any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open source
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2023
… the quality of these notes went downhill very quickly. Very often the notes were argumentative, abusive or just plain wrong. One of the most egregious examples in recent memory has to be when End Wokeness kicked up a firestorm over a plan to ban the famous V-J Day photograph of a sailor grabbing a woman and kissing her:
EXCLUSIVE:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 5, 2024
The Department Of Veterans Affairs just BANNED the V-J Day kiss photo from all department facilities.
"To promote a culture of inclusivity and awareness… your cooperation is vital." pic.twitter.com/MZfNHbpV76
This was 100% valid journalism. This post was based on a document proven to be authentic by subsequent events and it led to a change in policy where the government backed down, but the post still got a Community Note admitting that everything s/he said was right when s/he wrote it, but then they changed their mind. How do you get a Community Note that admits that the story was correct when written?
Well, the answer is you get them when Community Notes are broken and they are.
Another pretty egregious (albeit funny) example is when Slate put out this petulant post:
It needs to be said: Sydney Sweeney's boobs are not that big https://t.co/L4hbmNEs9a
— Slate (@Slate) March 11, 2024
For a while, that post had a Community Note that said simply: ‘Yes they are.’ If we recall correctly, the Note also linked to Instagram, presumably showing lots of pictures of the actress as evidence. Of course, that is also funny but it was also kind of unfair to Slate. After all, ‘that big’ is kind of a vague statement, so how can anyone else dispute that? Maybe the Slate author has an … um … inflated sense of what counts as big in that context.
And, of course, we have previously has pointed out that a Community Note got the law flat-out wrong when talking about Robert Kennedy Jr. being denied Secret Service protection. Indeed, the people writing that Community Note don’t appear to be lawyers, even though they were discussing the law, because no competent lawyer would cite a website discussing a statute, rather than the actual statute itself.
Of course, at least two of those examples are funny. But these examples also highlight a serious problem. Musk et. al. needs to fix Community Notes. We think the simplest way to fix them is take them out of the monetization equation. Once activists stop believing they can use this to screw with people’s income, the desire to use it abusively is significantly reduced.
Coming back to Ms. Gabriel, several of ‘Letterman’s’ followers claimed to basically troll the rating system. Mind you, we don't think there is any malice here, just them clowning on a woman for missing a joke (who here hasn't done that at least once?).
Just did the same thing with a big smile.
— A.D. (@DadOutOfStyle) March 28, 2024
First time rating a community note:
— KDXB2000 (@kuiperDXB) March 28, 2024
😊 😃 😆 pic.twitter.com/uHT4hqc4Wf
More comedy:
If it gets a community note you will quickly learn that X has a policy of never correcting a licensed Notary Public like Coach. You fail to recognize the brilliance of someone who owns BOTH a gently used set of World Book Encyclopedias AND a vintage globe.
— Howard Roark II (@tr123xyz) March 28, 2024
You’re going to get community notes for this treasonous tweet.
— Burt Macklin (@BurtMaclin_FBI) March 28, 2024
Honestly, we are not fans of 'Letterman' ourselves. We’re not saying he is never funny (and to be fair, we are less likely to to find humor in bare text, anyway), but we are saying that he is not as funny as he seems to think he is.
Sobbing at the community note https://t.co/HbG46Zj3Vo
— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) March 28, 2024
How many SEC titles has Brigitte won? I count ZERO ... meanwhile, Coach can't even open doors without help, he's got so many title rings.
— Marc J. Randazza 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 🇧🇷 (@marcorandazza) March 28, 2024
stay in your lane, lady. https://t.co/ilzL7ic78y
This is funny, but it also illustrates how the Community Notes function isn't perfect and can be abused. https://t.co/HHjbOrpcWP
— Rodger 🍜 (@catholiclawyer) March 28, 2024
WTF? @elonmusk, how can @CommunityNotes be co-opted and manipulated like this?
— Amber Krabach (@AK4WA) March 28, 2024
This is supposed to be a @X SERVICE to the PUBLIC that has credibility and authority.
FIX IT or GET RID OF IT. https://t.co/OxEjhKY94C pic.twitter.com/qER1usEWYU
Candidate for community note of the century https://t.co/BS5WoPEA8G
— Maryland Sports Report (@410sportsreport) March 28, 2024
We'll see how you feel in 76 years.
I get it’s all a joke but Community notes is trash. Truth has never been consensus / democratically based. Letting random people vote on stuff leads to jokes and or harassment https://t.co/RPmrG80q17
— Utah Man (@RealUtahMan) March 28, 2024
That is correct. If Twitter/X existed in the Seventeenth Century, Galileo might have posted that the sun is the center of the solar system, only to get a Community Note saying that he is wrong. There can be a strong consensus on a point that is factually wrong.
Not to be that guy, but this literally says otherwise: pic.twitter.com/5HJGMzBRPr
— TexasZachIsBack (@TexasZachIsBack) March 28, 2024
It might be hard to see, but his picture is nothing but the word "otherwise."
We admit we took too long to get that joke, but we first saw it early this morning, so we are going to plead not guilty by reason of not enough caffeine. Since this author is a lawyer who has a pristine copy of the World Book Encyclopedias, you can rest assured that this is a genuine legal defense.
(No, of course it isn’t a real defense. But maybe it should be.)
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