Temporal order of deletions relative to Community Notes display on X

Determine whether deletions of misleading posts on the social media platform X occur before or after the display of Community Notes fact-checks by establishing deletion timestamps or otherwise inferring the temporal ordering of deletion events relative to the time at which the first helpful Community Note is surfaced on each post. This resolves the uncertainty created by the X API providing only deletion status without deletion times, which precludes direct causal attribution of Community Notes to subsequent deletions.

Background

The paper analyzes whether community-based fact-checking (Community Notes) reduces the spread of misleading posts on X and examines its effect on post deletion. However, the X API does not provide deletion timestamps, only the deletion status, which prevents direct identification of whether deletion happened before or after a note was displayed.

To address this limitation indirectly, the authors employed a Regression Discontinuity Design using the note helpfulness score cutoff that determines display eligibility. While this method estimates increased deletion odds associated with displayed notes, the precise temporal sequence of deletion relative to note display remains unresolved and would require timestamp data or alternative inference methods.