AI Context-Adding: The Next Leap in Social Media Credibility

Social media has given us unprecedented access to news and ideas — but also unprecedented exposure to mis- and disinformation. While platforms have tried various solutions, few have achieved the right balance between speed, credibility, inclusivity, and neutrality.

One of the more promising ideas in recent years is X’s Community Notes — a crowdsourced way to add user-generated context to posts. But as it stands, the system is still largely unmoderated, inconsistent, and prone to both bias and misuse.

I believe the idea can be greatly enhanced by blending democratic user participation with the speed and scale of AI. Not to fact-check in an aggressive, “true/false” sense, but to add benign, nuanced context that enriches understanding and reduces online polarization.

The Model I Propose 

1. Open Participation – The system should be open to all users, or at least low-barrier paying users.

2. Evidence-Based Flagging – Users can flag a post they believe lacks context or misrepresents events — but they must support their flag with credible mainstream sources.

3. Threshold Activation – Only when a high number of unique users (in the thousands) flag the post with evidence does the AI step in.

4. AI Context Generation – The AI reads all submitted sources, searches for additional credible coverage, and then drafts a concise, neutral context note.

5. Nuance Over Verdict – The AI avoids “true/false” judgments, instead offering factual background, multiple perspectives, and links for further reading.

6. Layered Presentation – Context notes should have a short headline summary, a few key bullet points, and source links. This serves both skim-readers and deep divers.

7. Transparency – A public dashboard should show how many flags triggered the note, which sources were used, and an AI confidence score.

Deepening the Source Pool

To maximize credibility, the AI should go far beyond daily news sites. It should tap into:

-Monthly magazines and long-form investigative features

-Peer-reviewed research journals and their publishers 

-Reports from intergovernmental banks and organizations (IMF, World Bank, UN agencies, WTO, etc.)

-Investment banks' and credit rating agencies' research reports

-National budget statements, statistical releases, and public audit reports

-Official government announcements and data portals

Platforms should subscribe to these sources if necessary — and advertise this range to build public trust in their AI-generated contexts.

Partnerships for Non-AI Platforms

Social media platforms without in-house AI can easily partner with independent AI providers (e.g., Bluesky with ChatGPT). This can create a service economy where AI companies compete to provide the most accurate, fastest, and most trusted context feeds.

Economic Incentives

If the ability to request AI context is restricted to paying or verified users, it not only deters spam but also:

-Attracts more subscriptions

-Appeals to professionals, journalists, and researchers

-Adds a credibility-driven brand edge

A Potential New Industry: Credibility-as-a-Service

If proven, this model could spawn a new business category — Credibility-as-a-Service. Smaller platforms could outsource context-adding to specialized AI providers, just as websites outsource payments to Stripe or hosting to AWS.

This could even lower the barrier for launching new social media platforms, since credibility tools would be available off-the-shelf.

Why This Can Work

Democratic – Open to large numbers of users, not just elites.

Inclusive – Requires collective action before AI intervenes.

Credible – Relies on high-quality, verifiable sources.

Neutral – Focuses on context, not verdicts.

Timely – AI can produce context within minutes of the threshold being reached.

The point is not to declare a post “true” or “false” — that often fuels more division. The point is to equip readers with enough trustworthy, well-rounded context to think for themselves.

Towards A Calmer Digital Public Sphere 

With AI as the speed engine, humans as the initiators, and credible sources as the foundation, social media could take a meaningful step toward a better-informed public sphere — and a calmer, more civil online conversation.