
Use of X's Community Notes has plummeted in 2025, data shows
Participation is plummeting in the community-driven feature that X owner Elon Musk touted as the solution to the social media site's misinformation problems.
Submissions to X's Community Notes, which add user-generated context and corrections to the platform's posts, have cratered this year, according to an NBC News analysis of X data. Fewer submissions has led to fewer notes getting displayed. And the number of notes isn't the only issue: In May, technical glitches led to the disappearance of notes from the main X site, which X acknowledged in a post.
Musk, who once routinely touted the feature, now rarely mentions it.
The system saw a peak of nearly 120,000 user-created notes in January. But the monthly counts have been cut in half since then, with fewer than 60,000 in May. Only a small percentage of notes created are displayed on the site, and displayed notes have declined by similar proportions, according to the analysis. Worldwide, traffic to X has ticked down since January from about 4.7 billion visits to 4.4 billion in May, according to estimates provided to NBC News from the analytics company Similarweb, though the rate of decline in Community Notes submissions is sharper than the rate of traffic decline.
The drop in Community Notes submissions began in February, the same month Musk said without evidence that the system was being gamed by foreign governments and needed to be fixed.

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Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Musk says robotaxi to launch in Austin, Texas on Sunday afternoon
June 22 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab has started testing robotaxis with passengers in Austin, Texas, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday, with customers paying a flat fee of $4.20, as the electric vehicle maker looks to roll out the much-anticipated service and gain a foothold in the self-driving technology race.


Auto Blog
2 hours ago
- Auto Blog
Tesla Insurance 2024 Losses, Combined Ratio & Safety Score Data-Driven Risks
Customer complaints mount as payouts lag In May 2025, Tesla's insurance arm posted a combined ratio of 121% — meaning for every dollar in premiums, it paid out $1.21 in claims and expenses. For context, most insurers break out into a profuse, 'I am going to lose my job' sweat if that number nudges above 95%. Elon Musk pitched Tesla Insurance, a subsidiary of Tesla Inc. as the 'missing piece' in the Tesla ecosystem. He argued Tesla owners now crave more than torque — they want their insurance bill to shrink as fast as their 0–60 mph time. 0:07 / 0:09 2025 Audi S3: 4 reasons to love it, 2 reasons to think twice Watch More Tesla Insurance Loss & Combined Ratios versus Industry Average, 2023–2024. In this chart, you can see just how far off the mark Tesla is compared to the industry average. The loss ratio shows what portion of premiums is paid out in claims, while the combined ratio adds all expenses. Above 100%? You're losing money on every single policy you sell, even before you count the cost of keeping the lights on. For Tesla, that means underwriting losses — $42 million in the first nine months of 2024 alone. It might not look like a lot, but by insurance industry standards, year over year 2023-2024 Tesla are still bleeding profusely. These are very serious 'in the red' numbers for an insurance company. The chart highlights that Tesla Insurance's loss and combined ratios were much higher than the industry averages in both 2023 and 2024. Even as Tesla improved in 2024, it still paid out far more in claims and expenses than it collected in premiums — underscoring ongoing profitability challenges compared to traditional auto insurers. The Third-Person Cinematic Scene The Tesla Insurance sold by Musk offered a 'disruptor' view of car insurance, no doubt spurred on by asking himself what in the data they already collect from owners' cars could they captialize on. Picture a Model Y idling in a suburban driveway, the morning sun glinting off its glass roof. The owner sips coffee, scrolling through the Tesla app — not for a new FSD beta, but to check how must she will have to pay this month in car insurance. The number flickers, driven by last week's hard braking and that one questionable left turn. A push notification: 'Safety Score: 92. Your rate may decrease.' But as the birds chirp and the caffeine kicks in, a question lingers: Is Tesla's insurance experiment a revolution in risk or just another Silicon Valley mirage? Let's also not forget a Tesla Y is meant to also be able to go off-road. What happens to this month's premium if our owner decides to take the family for a spin to a favorite camp site? What about when you decide to go hands-free? The premium will surely spike. The Disruptor's Dilemma: When Data Meets Damage Claims Tesla Insurance launched with a promise: harness real-time driving data, reward safe behavior, and undercut legacy insurers. The pitch? 'We know our cars best, so we can price risk better.' For a while, it worked—sort of. By 2024, Tesla Insurance had reached a $300 million annual premium run rate and was available in 16 states (Tesla Q1 2025 Earnings). But then came the numbers: a combined ratio of 145% in 2023, easing to 'only' 121% by Q3 2024. Progress, sure, but still deep in the red. Any other insurer would be firing people hand over fist. Autoblog Newsletter Autoblog brings you car news; expert reviews and exciting pictures and video. Research and compare vehicles, too. Sign up or sign in with Google Facebook Microsoft Apple By signing up I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge that I have read the Privacy Policy . You may unsubscribe from email communication at anytime. Safety Score: The Algorithmic Tightrope Tesla's secret sauce is the Safety Score — a real-time, black-box rating that turns every commute into a behavioral audit. Hard brake at a yellow light? That's a ding. Take a corner with a little too much verve? Another. Go off-road? God only knows. In theory, this should incentivize safer driving and lower claims. In practice, owners complain about 'phantom dings', lifestyle choices they didn't have to make before, and inscrutable penalties. Again, Tesla's monitoring feels both opaque and invasive. And then there's the repair bill. Teslas remain expensive to fix, with parts and labor often pricier than their ICE counterparts. And mostly VIN-locked. Even with all that data, Tesla Insurance can't escape the gravitational pull of high repair costs — especially as increased vandalism and accident rates tick up in urban markets. The Investor's Paradox: Growth vs. Gravity For investors, Tesla Insurance is both a carrot and a stick. The business is growing — fast — but the losses are stubborn. As Tesla expands coverage and refines its algorithms, the combined ratio is falling, but not fast enough. The industry gold standard is a combined ratio below 95 percent. Tesla's 121 percent is still a very long way from liquid. Tesla Insurance has kept being able to pay claims despite earning less than the costs by cash infusions from Tesla Inc, their parent company. Tesla Insurance lost $30 million in 2023, and $42 million for the first 9 months of 2024; so it will be well over $50 million for the full 2024 so expect the line for 2024 in the chart to rise. The stakes are real, of course. If Tesla cracks the code, using its data edge to drive down claims and costs, and its owners feel it adds to their life, it could rewrite the rules of auto insurance. It needs to do this without alienating the insured with premium increases on every hard brake. If they can't do these things, the business becomes a costly distraction, a cautionary tale for tech giants who think they can outsmart old-school actuaries. Real-World Rituals: The Human Cost of Disruption For owners, the promise of lower premiums is offset by frustration with claims processing and the opaque Safety Score, which nudges their premiums up and down seemingly at random. The ritual of checking your rate has become a new form of range anxiety. Will this month's premium spike because of a single swerve? Meanwhile, Tesla forums buzz with tales of denied claims and customer service black holes. So, is Tesla Insurance the promised disruptor? Is it a revolution in the making or a slow-motion fender-bender? The numbers say 'not yet' — but the experiment is far from over but shrouded in corporate blood lost. At 70 mph, with the Safety Score whispering in your ear, you have to wonder: is this the future of insurance, or just another beta test by a known conjurer? In the end, all we really want is a policy that's as smart — and as fair — as the car it covers. About the Author Brian Iselin View Profile


The Independent
9 hours ago
- The Independent
Would you hail a 'robotaxi'? Musk bets cabs will give Tesla a lift after boycotts and sales plunge
Elon Musk promised in 2019 that driverless Tesla 'robotaxis' would be on the road 'next year,' but it didn't happen. A year later, he promised to deliver them the next year, but that didn't happen either. Despite the empty pledges the promises kept coming. Last year in January, Musk said, 'Next year for sure, we'll have over a million robotaxis.' Would you settle for 10 or 12? Musk appears to be on the verge of making his robotaxi vision a reality with a test run of a small squad of self-driving cabs in Austin, Texas, starting Sunday. Reaching a million may take a year or more, however, although the billionaire should be able to expand the service this year if the Austin demo is a success. The stakes couldn't be higher, nor the challenges. While Musk was making those 'next year' promises, rival Waymo was busy deploying driverless taxis in Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin and other cities by using a different technology that allowed it to get to market faster. It just completed its 10 millionth paid ride. Boycotts related to Musk's politics have tanked Tesla's sales. Rival electric vehicle makers with newly competitive models have stolen market share. And investors are on edge after a $150 billion stock wipeout when Musk picked a social media fight with a U.S. president overseeing federal car regulators who could make the robotaxi rollout much more difficult. The stock has recovered somewhat after Musk said he regretted some of his remarks. Tesla shareholders have stood by Musk over the years because he's defied the odds by building a successful standalone electric vehicle company — self-driving car promises aside — and making them a lot of money in the process. A decade ago, Tesla shares traded for around $18. The shares closed Friday at $322. Musk says the Austin test will begin modestly enough, with just 10 or 12 vehicles picking up passengers in a limited area. But then it will quickly ramp up and spread to other cities, eventually reaching hundreds of thousands if not a million vehicles next year. Some Musk watchers on Wall Street are skeptical. 'How quickly can he expand the fleet?' asks Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA. 'We're talking maybe a dozen vehicles initially. It's very small." Morningstar 's Seth Goldstein says Musk is being classic Musk: Promising too much, too quickly. 'When anyone in Austin can download the app and use a robotaxi, that will be a success, but I don't think that will happen until 2028," he says. 'Testing is going to take a while.' Musk's tendency to push up the stock high with a bit of hyperbole is well known among investors. In 2018, he told Tesla stockholders he had 'funding secured' to buy all their shares at a massive premium and take the company private. But he not only lacked a written commitment from financiers, according to federal stock regulators who fined him, he hadn't discussed the loan amount or other details with them. More recently, Musk told CNBC in May that Tesla was experiencing a 'major rebound' in demand. A week later an auto trade group in Europe announced sales had plunged by half. Musk has come under fire for allegedly exaggerating the ability of the system used for its cars to drive themselves, starting with the name. Full Self-Driving is a misnomer. The system still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road because they may need to intervene and take control at any moment. Federal highway safety regulators opened an investigation into FSD last year after several accidents, and the Department of Justice has conducted its own probe, though the status of that is not known. Tesla has also faced lawsuits over the feature, some resulting in settlements, other dismissed. In one case, a judge ruled against the plaintiffs but only because they hadn't proved Musk 'knowingly' made false statements. Musk says the robotaxis will be running on an improved version of Full Self-Driving and the cabs will be safe. He also says the service will be able to expand rapidly around the country. His secret weapon: Millions of Tesla owners now on the roads. He says an over-the-air software update will soon allow them to turn their cars into driverless cabs and start a side business while stuck at the office for eight hours or on vacation for a week. 'Instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money,' Musk said earlier this year, calling it an Airbnb model for cars. 'You will be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet.' Musk says Tesla also can move fast to deploy taxis now because of his decision to rely only on cameras for the cars to navigate, unlike Waymo, which has gone a more expensive route by supplementing its cameras with lasers and radar. 'Tesla will have, I don't know,' Musk mused in an conference call with investors, '99% market share or something ridiculous.' Given Waymo's head start and potential competition from Amazon and others, dominating the driverless market to that extent could be a reach. But Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst and big Musk fan, says this time Musk may actually pull it off because of Tesla's ability to scale up quickly. And even skeptics like Morningstar's Goldstein acknowledge that Musk occasionally does gets things right, and spectacularly so. He upended the car industry by getting people to buy expensive electric vehicles, brought his Starlink satellite internet service to rural areas and, more recently, performed a gee-whiz trick of landing an unmanned SpaceX rocket on a platform back on earth. 'Maybe his timelines aren't realistic," Goldstein says, 'but he can develop futuristic technology products.'