Researching the Riots: An Evaluation of the Efficacy of Community Notes During the 2024 Southport Riots

Perry, Corsi, and Malik's evaluation of X's Community Notes mechanism during the 2024 Southport riots is the first independent assessment of the system's performance during a real-world disinformation crisis. The finding is damning: Community Notes was systematically too slow to counter viral disinformation during the riots — notes appeared on harmful content only after that content had already achieved significant reach, making the mechanism effectively irrelevant to the crisis communication challenge.

The timing problem the report identifies is structural, not incidental: Community Notes relies on crowdsourced consensus formation, which takes time, while viral disinformation spreads in minutes. The mismatch between the speed of harm and the speed of correction is not a calibration problem that can be fixed by improving the system — it is a fundamental limitation of the consensus-based model. For policymakers working on Online Safety Act secondary legislation and platform self-regulatory accountability, this report provides evidence-based grounds for scepticism about Community Notes as a substitute for proactive content moderation during crisis events.